Impávido (49 page)

“The pickup would go quicker if we put ships in orbit,” Desjani suggested.

“Yeah.” Geary frowned at the display. “There’s no sign of minefields, we can’t see any major defensive weaponry on the planet, and even the Syndic military base there seems to be half shut down. But something’s still bothering me.”

Desjani nodded thoughtfully. “After the Syndic attempt to use merchant ships on suicide missions against us, it’s understandable to be worried about undetected threats.”

“The Syndics had time to lay that minefield trap for us. That means they also had time to try to conceal that labor camp or even try to move the prisoners in it. But there’s no sign they did that. Why? Because it’s bait far more attractive to us than those light warships near the jump point? The sort of thing we can’t pass up?”

“Yet there’s no sign of an ambush this time. No sign of anything that could strike at us.”

“No,” Geary agreed, wondering if he really was just being hypercautious. “Co-President Rione said the Syndic civilian planetary leaders she talked to seemed scared witless. But not a single military officer was available to talk.”

That made Desjani frown. “Interesting. But what could they be planning? If there was anything hidden, we should’ve spotted it.”

Geary tapped some controls irritably. “Let’s assume we do go into orbit. The fleet’s so big we’d have to be way out from the planet.”

“These moons will be an annoyance, but they’re not much bigger than asteroids. Any formations running past them can dodge easily enough since they’re traveling in a loose cluster and on fixed orbits.”

“Yeah, and we have to swing past the moons anyway, even with my plan.” He scowled at the display.

Nothing he’d learned of the war since being rescued seemed to be helping, so Geary cast his mind back, trying to remember the lessons imparted to him by experienced officers long dead, the sort of professionals who’d been killed in the earliest decades of the war along with everyone they’d managed to teach their tricks of the trade. For some reason the sight of the small moons triggered memories of one such trick, a single ship hiding behind a much larger world to lunge out on a passing target. But that didn’t make sense. The moons of the fifth planet were too small for anything but a few light units to hide behind, and even suicide attacks by such small ships would fail against the massed might of the Alliance fleet, concentrated in a tight formation to minimize the distance the shuttles would have to travel.

But what had the commander of that other ship said? “If I’d been a snake, I could’ve bit you! I was right on top of you, and you didn’t even know it.”

Geary grinned unpleasantly. “I think I know what the Syndic military is planning, and why those civilians on the fifth world are so scared. Let’s make a few modifications to this plan of mine.”

THE fifth world, which Geary had now learned had been given the poetic name Sutrah Five in typical Syndicate Worlds bureaucratic style, lay only thirty minutes away now at the Alliance fleet’s current velocity. Under his original plan, the fleet would have begun braking and swinging to port now, setting up a pass over the planet and inevitably crossing through the space where the moons of Sutrah were orbiting.

He glanced at the five moons again. They orbited in a cluster, only a few tens of thousands of kilometers from each other. Once upon a time they’d probably been a single large chunk of matter, but at some point tidal stresses from the fifth planet, or perhaps the near passage of some other large object, had torn that single moon into the five fragments.

Geary tapped his communications controls. “Captain Tulev, are your ships ready?”

“Standing by,” Tulev reported, his voice betraying no excitement.

“You may fire when ready,” Geary ordered.

“Understood. Firing projectiles now.”

On Geary’s display, large objects detached themselves from the bulks of Tulev’s ships, hurled forward by propulsion and guidance packs that boosted their speed a little higher than the nearly .1 light speed of the fleet.

Co-President Rione, occupying the observer’s seat on the bridge of the Dauntless, stared at Geary.

“We’re firing? At what?”

“Those moons,” Geary advised. He noticed Captain Desjani trying to hide a smile at Rione’s surprise.

“The moons of the fifth world?” Co-President Rione’s voice expressed skeptical curiosity. “Do you have some particular dislike of moons, Captain Geary?”

“Not usually.” Geary got a perverse satisfaction out of knowing that Rione’s spies in his fleet hadn’t heard about this operation.

She waited, then finally unbent enough to ask more. “Why are you launching an attack on those moons?”

“Because I think they’re weapons.” Geary tapped some controls, bringing up magnified images of the moons, their surfaces resembling those of asteroids. “See this? Signs that excavation activity was conducted. Well-concealed, so we had to look for it to find it, but there it is.”

“On a small, airless moon?” Rione asked. “How can you tell it’s recent?”

“We can’t from here. But all five moons show the same signs.”

“I see.” Whatever else could be said about Rione, she thought quickly. “What do you think was buried inside these moons, Captain Geary?”

“Firecrackers, Madam Co-President. Really big firecrackers.” The images representing the massive kinetic energy projectiles, or ‘big rocks’ in Marine terminology, were steadily pulling away from Tulev’s ships on a curving trajectory aimed at the moons. Despite the incredible amount of damage they could inflict, such weapons couldn’t usually be used because they were too easily dodged by anything able to maneuver. But the moons were on fixed orbits, following the same track around the fifth world that they’d coursed for innumerable years. It was strange to think that after today those moons would orbit that world no more.

Geary activated the fleet command circuit. “All units, execute preplanned maneuver Sigma at time four five.”

The time scrolled down, and every ship in the fleet turned itself, using their propulsion systems to reduce their velocity and simultaneously altering course to starboard to pass Sutrah Five on the side away from where the moons of that world had their dates with the projectiles launched by the Alliance fleet. Geary watched and waited, taking pleasure in the intricate ballet, all of those ships moving in unison against the darkness of space. Even the lumbering and partially misnamed fast fleet auxiliaries like Titan and Witch moved with what seemed unusual nimbleness.

Twenty minutes later, as the decelerating Alliance fleet was still approaching Sutrah Five, the huge solid metal projectiles launched by Tulev’s ships slammed at a speed of just over thirty thousand kilometers per second almost simultaneously into the five moons of Sutrah.

Even the smallest moon was massive by human standards, but the amount of kinetic energy involved in each collision was enough to stagger a planet. Geary’s view of the moons was obscured as the Dauntless’s sensors automatically blocked the intense flashes of visible light from the collisions, then by a rapidly growing ball of dust and fragments, some large and some small, flying outward from the points of impact.

Geary waited, knowing Desjani had already passed orders to her watch-standers on what to look for. It didn’t take long for the first report. “Spectroscopic analysis shows unusual quantities of radioactive material and traces of gases consistent with very large nuclear detonation devices.”

“You guessed right,” Desjani noted, her eyes showing the complete trust in him that bothered Geary. He didn’t like seeing it in her any more than he liked seeing it in so many others in this fleet, because of his certainty that sooner or later he would fail that trust. They believed he was perfect, and he knew otherwise.

“Explain, please?” Rione asked in a crisp voice. “Why would the Syndics have placed large nuclear weapons inside those moons? Some of those large fragments will impact on Sutrah Five.”

“That was a risk the Syndics were willing to take and one that I judged I had to take,” Geary advised heavily. “Given the unpopulated nature of much of the world, the odds of anything being hit are tiny. You see, Madam Co-President, the Syndics knew we’d have to do two things to liberate the prisoners on that planet. We’d have to go close to the planet, and we’d have to get the fleet into a tight formation so our shuttles wouldn’t have to fly any longer distances than necessary to handle picking up and distributing the people from the labor camp.”

He pointed to the spreading cloud of debris. “When we were close to those moons, or rather to where those moons used to be, they’d have set off those big nuclear explosives inside them, blowing them into dense interlocking fields of heavy fragments. We could have lost a good number of ships to that, even big warships that happened to be too close.”

Rione’s eyes glinted with anger. “No wonder the civilians I spoke with were frightened.”

“I doubt the planetary leaders knew exactly what was going to happen,” Geary suggested. “But they surely knew the Syndic leaders in the system were going to do something.”

“Something that would’ve subjected them to the same risk of bombardment by fragments of the moons and a retaliatory barrage by the fleet.” Rione’s face was grim. “Captain Geary, I know that under the laws of war you’re now justified in conducting an orbital bombardment of installations and cities on Sutrah Five, but I ask you to show some mercy to the civilian pawns living on that world.”

Geary could almost see the disdain on Desjani’s face at the suggestion, but he nodded. “We will retaliate, Madam Co-President, but I won’t slaughter helpless civilians. Please recontact the civil authorities on Sutrah Five and tell them to immediately evacuate all industrial, mining, and transportation centers. Any space facility or field is also to be evacuated. Tell them I won’t decide how much to destroy, including more than what’s on that list, until I see what sort of greeting our Marines encounter at the labor camp.”

He let his anger show now, anger at the thought of what might have happened. “Make sure they understand that if there’s any more problems at all, there will be hell to pay, and they’ll be the ones receiving the bill.”

Rione nodded, smiling thinly. “Very well, Captain Geary. I will ensure your orders to them are understood and that they know their lives hang on the thread of their cooperation with us.”

Desjani shifted as if uncomfortable. “The military base, too, right, Captain Geary?”

Geary checked, seeing that the part of the planet holding the base was within line of sight of the fleet right now. “I assume it’s already been evacuated?”

Desjani frowned and checked, then frowned a little more. “No. A partial evacuation seems under way.”

“Partial?”

“Yes. There’s some columns of ground vehicles, but most of the occupants appear to be family members. Few uniforms noted.” Desjani quirked an eyebrow at Geary. “It looks like the Syndic troops are planning on crewing their positions to the end.” She didn’t seem bothered by the idea.

Geary was. He rubbed his chin, thinking. “Ground vehicles. Nothing else has been spotted leaving?”

“Let me see.” This time both of Desjani’s eyebrows went up. “Ah, yes. Several air vehicles departed over half an hour ago, headed toward the nearest mountain range. The system has maintained a track on them.”

“The top commanders, headed for a buried command bunker to ride out our retaliation in safety and comfort,” Geary stated.

Desjani nodded.

“I want to find that bunker.”

She grinned.

“I assume we’ve got kinetic rounds for orbital bombardment that can penetrate a fair distance into solid rock?”

“Yes, we do, sir,” Desjani replied with positive glee. Geary had telegraphed a desire to blow away Syndics, and her world was a happy one.

A swarm of shuttles had left the Alliance fleet, descending on Sutrah Five like a cloud of huge insects falling on their prey. Overhead, the ships of the Alliance fleet were concentrated into a tight formation that nonetheless covered a large sector of space above the planet. Geary knew that the inhabitants of Sutrah Five were looking up right now in fear, knowing that his fleet could rain death upon them and render the entire planet uninhabitable in very short order.

The landing force virtual display floated next to Geary’s seat, with the ranks of images from Marine officers presented like trading cards for his selection. He could, with the movement of a finger, talk directly to any of the Marines and see through their eyes, thanks to helmet-mounted sensors. But the only officer he called up was Colonel Carabali, not wanting to jump the chain of command, even though the command and control system made that entirely too easy.

“The reconnaissance shuttles have detected no signs of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction at the labor camp site,” Carabali reported. “We’ll conduct another sweep, then land the recon teams.”

“Have you confirmed Alliance prisoners are present in predicted numbers?”

“Looks like it, sir.” Carabali grinned. “From up here they seem pretty happy.”

Geary sat back, smiling himself. He’d encountered a lot of situations since being rescued that he’d never expected, and most of those had been unpleasant. Duty had been a heavy burden. But now there were thousands of people who’d never expected liberation, viewing the shuttles of this fleet overhead, people who might’ve already spent decades as prisoners with no hope of release. This fleet, his fleet, was going to rescue them. It felt good.

If only the Syndics didn’t try anything else. It was still possible for thousands on the verge of being freed to die in that camp.

“Recon shuttles down,” Carabali reported, echoing the information on Geary’s own display, which he’d focused on the camp. “Teams deploying.”

Geary gave in to temptation, calling up one of the recon team officers. A window opened with a view from the officer’s helmet, showing bare dirt and battered structures. The sky was a washed-out pale blue verging on gray, its appearance as cold and drab as life must have been in that labor camp. No Syndic guards were visible, but the Alliance prisoners had formed up into ranks, their officers in front, waiting with anxious and dazed faces as the Marines dashed past them, searching for any signs of danger.