Torn between fascination at the destruction and sorrow over its necessity, Geary selected one special site and homed in on it. The target in the mountain range didn’t show as much obvious destruction as other locations, because the kinetic round fired at it had been shaped to penetrate deeply into the rock on impact. The crater was deeper but smaller than at other locations, as if a spear had lanced into the planet seeking a special target. As it had, because this was where the hidden command post had once existed. Geary wondered if the high-ranking leaders who’d been willing to subject others to the risk of bombardment had themselves had time to realize they wouldn’t be safe after all.
“I know the Syndic military base is an obsolete burden to them,” Desjani remarked, “but it wouldn’t have cost us much to eliminate it as well, as long as we were trying to teach the Syndics a lesson.”
Geary shook his head, his eyes still on the impact site where the planetary high command had been sheltered. “That depends on what lesson we’re trying to teach, doesn’t it? Vengeance? Or justice?”
Desjani spent a long time quiet. “Vengeance is easier to inflict, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t require much thought.”
She nodded slowly. Whatever lesson he’d taught the Syndics, Desjani seemed to be thinking a great deal.
On his display, Geary could see the swarm of projectiles headed for Sutrah Four. The people there would be seeing the impacts on their sister world and would know a similar fate awaited many locations on the planet they called home. They would also get to watch the bombardment heading their way for another hour or so, prolonging the suffering of their experience. He wondered if they’d blame the Alliance or the Syndic leaders who had been willing to sacrifice them.
Another conference, the atmosphere tense because every ship commander present knew that Geary intended laying out his next course of action. Granted, besides Geary himself, only Captain Desjani was actually physically present. Once again, Co-President Rione wasn’t in the room. Geary wondered this time if her absence had anything to do with the rumors that she and Geary were personally involved.
The absence of Captain Fighting Falco was a pleasant surprise but left Geary worrying what Falco was up to. Falco didn’t seem like the sort to give up easily, and Geary would’ve much preferred to see any political games being played right before him to having them occur in shadows outside of his knowledge. He hoped that Rione’s spies would tell her of anything Geary had to worry about and that she would pass those reports on to him.
Geary looked around the table, knowing he was about to set off a firestorm and seeing no alternative. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Syndics are drawing a net about us. The traps we encountered in this system are clear evidence that the Syndics are predicting our next objectives well enough to prepare for us. As you all know,” or should know, Geary added to himself, “the Syndics had light ships posted at all of the jump points in this system. As the light from our arrival reached them, three of those ships jumped out. There are three possible destinations through those gates, and all will be warned of our possible impending arrival.”
He waited for any comments, but there were none. Everyone seemed to be waiting to hear his proposal. “I’ve taken a look at our possible objectives from this point, and the reachable stars beyond those, and it’s all too clear that the Syndics will be able to channel our options down to the point of being able to trap us with greatly superior forces no matter what we do.” He paused, letting that sink in. “I have no doubt that we’d inflict terrible losses on those Syndic forces, but this fleet would be destroyed in the process.” That was a valuable offering to their pride, Geary thought, as well as a reminder that this was still about trying to get home.
“The Marine exploitation groups were able to get an outdated but useful Syndicate Worlds star system guide from files left behind at the labor camp.” Geary nodded toward Colonel Carabali. “After reviewing that, I believe there’s another option, which I think gives us a chance to not only avoid that trap but also to inflict a powerful blow to the Syndics, totally disrupt their plans, and leave us many options for heading back toward Alliance space again.” He used his finger to draw a line through the display. “We take the fleet back to the jump point we used to arrive. Not to go back to Kaliban but to jump to Strabo.”
“Strabo?” someone blurted after several seconds of silence. “What’s at Strabo?”
“Nothing. Not even enough rocks to have developed much of a human presence and now completely abandoned.”
The captain of the Polaris was staring at the display. “Strabo is almost directly away from Alliance space.”
“Yes,” Geary agreed. “The Syndics have to believe the chance we’d jump back toward the way we came is very remote. They haven’t sent anyone through that jump point since we’ve arrived. Once they get word that we did, they’ll consider a jump to Strabo even more remote. But we’re going to throw them off worse than that.” He swung his finger again, knowing his next words would trigger a much stronger reaction. “From Strabo we jump to Cydoni.”
“Cydoni?” Captain Numos had finally been prodded into challenging Geary again. “That’s even deeper into Syndic space!”
“It is. The Syndics will figure out eventually that we’ve jumped to Strabo, and from there they’ll assume we’re headed for the other three stars within range of Strabo, all of which bend back to Alliance space. It’ll take them a long time to figure out we jumped to Cydoni.”
“What possible purpose could that serve?” Numos demanded. “Shall we run to the far side of Syndic space? They won’t expect that, will they? Do you have any idea how badly we’ll need resupply by the time we reach Cydoni? What’s there?”
“Nothing,” Geary stated. Everyone was staring at him. “It’s another abandoned system. The star’s photosphere is expanding, so the one once-habitable planet was evacuated decades ago. No, what counts is what lies beyond Cydoni.” He gestured again, trying to make it dramatic. “At extreme jump range from Cydoni is Sancere. Again at an angle away from Alliance space, but the odds seem exceptionally good that our arrival at Sancere would be a total surprise to the Syndics.”
“Sancere’s the site of some of the Syndicate Worlds’ biggest shipyards,” Captain Duellos observed in the shocked silence that followed. “But can we really reach it from Cydoni? Jump drive specifications don’t say they have that range.”
“We can. I’ve made longer jumps,” Geary advised. “Since the invention of the hypernet, you all haven’t been dependent on jump drives for long hauls between stars. We had no alternative to using the jump drives in my time, and we learned some ways of extending the range past the official maximum.”
“This is insane!” Captain Faresa commented in a baffled voice. “Running deeper into Syndic space, repeatedly, to reach an objective sure to be heavily guarded with our own supplies near exhaustion!”
“It won’t be heavily guarded enough to deal with us,” Geary stated with a confidence greater than he really felt. There was always that awful chance that he was wrong. But he couldn’t admit to that and have a hope of convincing these people. “The Syndics will have had to send strong detachments every which way to try to find us and intercept us. They’ll never suspect we’ve been bold enough to strike at Sancere, even if they have someone who remembers that the jump drives will let us reach there from Cydoni. And resupply won’t be a problem. This is a heavily populated major shipbuilding center. It’ll have everything we could possibly want.”