“What a hole,” Desjani muttered, putting into words what nearly everyone in the fleet must have been thinking.
“Let’s get this done and get out of here,” Geary agreed. “General Carabali, begin the operation. All units in the First Fleet, be prepared to engage any warships that threaten the shuttles or the prison camp.” At least with the fleet in this tight a formation, communication delays were too tiny to be noticeable.
The four groups of Syndic ships were all less than a light-minute distant, close enough to be worrisome but not close enough to justify postponing the recovery. The guards at the prison camp had fled in the few available vehicles, leaving the prisoners no longer watched over but still effectively imprisoned by the wasteland surrounding the camp.
The planet scrolled by beneath the fleet as the shuttles launched, coming down toward the camp in waves.
Geary, his nerves keyed up to highest alert, watched his display, waiting for something unexpected to happen, for some threat to materialize. The first wave of shuttles were penetrating the atmosphere of the planet, the site of the prison camp becoming visible on the planet as the orbiting fleet approached it from high above.
The high-priority signal that blared at Geary came from an unexpected source. Why would Tanuki be calling—?
Geary hit accept, his worries multiplying rapidly.
Instead of Captain Smythe, he saw Lieutenant Jamenson, her green hair contrasting vividly with a face gone pale. “Admiral! You have to call off this operation! They’ve got the mother of all traps down there!”
Jamenson didn’t wait for a reply, but kept talking, the words spilling out of her so fast that Geary could barely understand them. “I just put it all together. I’m sorry… I… there are two engineering units identified in the Syndic comms. They were in this star system recently, and I know those unit designators. They’re both the equivalent of what the Alliance calls planet-breakers, engineers who use large and superlarge munitions for certain specialized tasks. Two of those units, Admiral. And the only major new construction in this star system is that camp.
“There was lots of large excavation gear here, and a very large amount of drilling equipment. I recognized the Syndic equipment codes. They dug some big holes and did a lot of drilling very recently.
“And there are some strange materials identified in cargo manifests or off-loading documents or transportation requests or gossip between individuals. Individually, those materials have a few uses, but together they are very reminiscent of an Alliance research project five decades ago. The code name… never mind the code name… the nickname for the project was Continental Shotgun. Bury a lot of very powerful nuclear munitions and use their energy when they explode to pump a huge field of single-use particle beam tubes. The research project aimed to turn a section of a planet about a hundred kilometers square into a one-time-only dense field of particle beams that could annihilate an invasion fleet when it passed above that region of the planet.”
Jamenson gasped a deep breath before she could continue speaking. “But it was abandoned because the weapon effectively destroyed the planet it was supposed to defend. The seismic impact of that many explosions that massive, the amount of material hurled into the atmosphere, the huge amount of nuclear contamination, it all combined to inflict massive damage and render a planet almost uninhabitable. That, and the target had to pass over the weapon, which was hard to guarantee.
“And there are several indications that senior security-force commanders have left the planet within the last few days. They and their families. Supposedly some expensive off-site gathering at what passes for a luxury resort on the largest moon of the habitable world, a moon that never orbits near the segment of land centered on that new camp.”
Geary wondered just how pale he looked. Iger had passed on the reports of the senior personnel leaving the planet, but that was common enough behavior for high-ranking Syndics when danger threatened and hadn’t aroused special alarm. The four small groups of Syndic warships, he now realized, were not positioned anywhere near a line drawn upward from the center of the prison-camp location. The hit-and-run attacks by those Syndic warships and their near presence had kept Geary’s ships in a tight defensive formation, and the tight Alliance formation would form a perfect target for a dense, wide field of particle beams as it swung above the prison camp to provide protection and orbital-firepower support as the Marine shuttles landed.
Landed on the center of a region rigged with massive nuclear munitions.
He was barely aware of his hand hitting the emergency comm overrides. “All units, this is Admiral Geary. Immediate execute, abort the landing operation. I say again, abort the landing operation. All shuttles are to return and be recovered as fast as possible.”
Can I alter course before the shuttles get back? How long do I have? I can see that damned camp. Will the Syndics trigger that continental shotgun if they see us aborting the landing so they can get as many shuttles as possible, or will they wait and see if we’ll come back?
They need to think we’ll come back.
“Emissary Rione, immediately contact the Syndic authorities and tell them we have to postpone the landing and recovery operation because of… contamination issues. We think there might be an unknown disease among the prisoners and need to recheck the test results before conducting the landing.”
Rione watched him, obviously surprised by Geary’s anxiety and frantic words. “Immediately? I’ll send the message now and ensure they receive it. How serious is this?”
“About as serious as it gets, but don’t let them see that you’re worried. Make it seem like a bureaucratic holdup.”
“I’m a good liar,” Rione said. “Consider it done.”
“Tanya, how hard would it be to… double the size of this formation? Increase the distances between ships by that factor?”
Desjani had already been focused on him, not having heard what Lieutenant Jamenson said but well aware that something had badly rattled Geary. Now she didn’t hesitate. “Not hard at all,” she said, her hands already flying across her display. “Done. I can transmit the modified formation whenever you ask for it. Let me know what’s going on when you can.”
“We underestimated them,” Geary said, his eyes on his display. The shuttles were turning around and coming back, some of them having already entered atmosphere and having to climb out. Another urgent message came in, this one from Carabali.
“What’s going on, Admiral?” the Marine general asked. “Why did we abort the landing?”
“I’ll give you the details when I can. Just get those damned shuttles recovered as fast as you possibly can.”
Rione was back. “CEO Gawzi has been informed. She wants to know how soon we will carry out the recovery operation.”
He checked the orbital data. If the fleet held its current path, it would swing over the prison camp region again in… “One and a half hours. Tell her one and a half hours, then we’ll conduct the recovery. Make sure she feels confident we’ll go through with it.”
Victoria Rione also knew when not to ask questions but just do as he asked. “Yes, Admiral.”
What else could he do? “We have to look like everything is routine except for aborting the landing operation,” Geary said out loud. “Until we get the shuttles on board. Are there any orbital changes I can make that won’t mess up the shuttle recovery but will alter our track over the planet?”