The merchant ships crawled closer to the Alliance fleet, Geary watching the streaming images of the Syndic merchant crews as seen by the Marines on one side, while on the other his display showed the twenty Syndic merchant ships proceeding at what felt like a leisurely pace toward their rendezvous with the Alliance auxiliaries.
Nothing seemed to be wrong. Nothing at all. What could I be overlooking? Geary searched his brain for anything, but he kept coming up empty. Maybe for once we did cover everything.
“Captain Geary, this is Colonel Carabali.”
A new window had appeared, showing Carabali’s face. She didn’t look happy. “Sir, there’s something about this I don’t like.”
And maybe we didn’t. Geary glanced toward Captain Desjani and gestured for her attention. “The Colonel’s unhappy about something.”
Desjani frowned and keyed into the conversation.
“Go ahead, Colonel,” Geary ordered.
Carabali pointed at something Geary couldn’t see. “Are you watching the video from the Syndic ships, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Does anything seem odd about their crews to you, sir? As a fleet officer, sir?”
Geary frowned, too, and studied the pictures more closely. There was something odd about them, now that Carabali had drawn his attention to it. “Are the senior merchant officers all supposed to be on their bridges?”
“Yes, sir, they are.”
Desjani made a brief noise. “The Syndics seem to grow their senior merchant officers very young, don’t they?”
Carabali nodded. “Yes. Exactly. I assume the Syndics called for volunteers to crew these ships, but as far as I can tell from visual examination, there’s not a man or woman aboard those ships older than their twenties.”
“Interesting batch of volunteers,” Geary said slowly. Most of the merchant captains I knew wouldn’t have left their ships to someone else, even for a run like this.”
“I’ve questioned my Marines. They indicate there was a definite lack of familiarity with the ships by many of these so-called crew members. They thought that was due to volunteers being assigned to the ships from the pool of available merchant sailors, but I’m not so sure that’s the reason.”
Geary thought about that and didn’t like it. Merchant ships tended to have older officers, people who’d learned their jobs and worked their way up through long years of experience. It was a very different kind of professionalism than the fleet officer kind, but strong enough in its own way. He took another look at the alleged merchant crews. “Young and physically fit, too, aren’t they?”
“Look at their eyes, sir. Look at the way they carry themselves,” Carabali urged.
“Damn.” Geary exchanged a glance with Desjani. “Those aren’t merchant sailors. They look like soldiers.”
“I’d stake my career on them being military,” Carabali agreed. “And not just any military. They’re trying to slouch around and act like civilians, but they don’t really know how to relax like that anymore. They’ve been too highly trained. They look to me like the sort of people you find in shock troops.”
“Shock troops.” Geary inhaled slowly. “The sort of troops you send on desperate missions.”
“Or one-way missions. Yes, sir.”
Desjani looked ready to order mass murder, and for once Geary didn’t blame her. “Alright, Colonel. What do you think they’re planning? Some sort of attack?”
Carabali chewed her lower lip. “Not a conventional assault. They’re too few, they’re not in armor, and they can’t have weapons easily accessible because we’d have found them. If there were sailors guarding them, they might still be able to overwhelm the guards, but not with my Marines on watch in full combat gear.”
“That’s what I’d think. Then what? We’ve confirmed there’s no weapons on those merchant ships.”
Desjani jerked as if struck by a thought, then leaned toward Geary and spoke in a low but urgent voice. “They have a weapon, sir. Their power cores.”
Geary blinked, trying to digest the information and seeing Carabali pale slightly as she heard Desjani’s statement. “Their power cores. Do you think they mean to overload their power cores when they get close to our ships?”
Carabali nodded vigorously. “Captain Desjani is right, sir. I’m sure of it. Look at the eyes of those Syndics, sir. They’re on a suicide mission.”
“I concur,” Desjani stated. “We all agree those aren’t merchant crews. They’re combat troops, and they have only one weapon available to them on those ships.”
Well, damn. Geary fought down an urge to curse loud and long. “Agreed. How can they overload their power cores while the Marines are watching?”
Desjani spoke again. “They’d have to have some sort of remote trigger rigged.” Carabali nodded. “It could be anywhere and look like anything.” Another nod.
“So should we take the crews down? Get them off the ships?”
Carabali shook her head this time. “If we start trying to herd them off the ships, they’ll probably trigger the overloads right away. Your big ships might be safe enough, but we’d lose every Marine and all the boarding shuttles.”
“What about killing them?” Desjani asked calmly.
Geary considered the question, and he considered what those Syndics were planning. “Yes. How good an option is that?”
Carabali grimaced. “Chancey, sir. We might be able to take them all down fast enough, but if they’ve got triggers tied to dead-man switches it’d just doom my Marines anyway.”
“Dead-man switches? Couldn’t we see—?”
Geary stopped speaking as Carabali shook her head again. “No, sir,” the Marine stated. “The switches could be implanted and linked to their nervous systems or their hearts. If the Syndics died and their hearts or nervous systems shut down, it could well trigger the overloads.”
“I see.” That’s an advance over what was available in my time, though I wouldn’t call it an improvement.
Carabali’s face brightened. “But there’s another option. My Marines have a riot control load-out because we expected to be dealing with civilians.”
“Meaning?” Geary pressed.
“Among other things, they have CRX gas dispensers. It’s riot suppression gas, not riot dispersal, so it’s odorless, colorless, and a tiny amount inhaled knocks someone out cold in a moment.”
“You’re suggesting we knock them out.”
“Yes, sir. They’ll be unconscious before they know we’re acting.”
“And you’re certain this CRX won’t cause some physical reaction that might trigger a dead-man switch?”
“Fairly certain. I can check with my medical personnel.”
“Do so, please.” Geary waited, trying not to let his impatience show, while the seconds crawled by until Carabali’s image focused back on Geary.
“Medical staff says the CRX will be safe.”
“Will be safe or probably will be safe?” Geary pressed.
Carabali grinned. “I asked them if they’d stake their lives on that assessment, and none of them hesitated.”
“They’re Marines,” Desjani noted dryly.
“Not the medical staff,” Carabali reminded her. “They’re all seconded to the Marines from the fleet, so even though associating with the Marines so closely causes a bit of us to rub off on them, they’re still not part of the same mind-set.”
The brief exchange brought a grin to Geary’s face. “Alright, then. We’ve established that the medical staff aren’t quite as willing to die in the line of duty as the average Marine. So we can assume we can take down those alleged merchant sailors safely.”
“That doesn’t mean there still won’t be a threat,” Desjani interjected. “The ships could be rigged in a dozen ways to automatically overload their cores when they get near our big ships. A few smart proximity fuses hidden on the hulls would do the trick, and there’s no way to guarantee we’d find them all in the time we’ve got.” Desjani paused. “Merchant ships don’t carry all the equipment that warships do, but they still have lots of different systems. There’s no telling what else might’ve been rigged to set off the power cores.”