“Truth,” the chief reported to Iger in a small voice.
“No wonder she looked shell-shocked when we saw her,” Desjani commented softly. “Worse than Lakota. First time I ever pitied a Syndic.”
Iger was gazing at the commander, his own face pale now. “We didn’t do it.”
But the Syndic kept talking, her voice wavering with stress. “We jumped here. Orders. Go to Atalia. We found a lot of ships waiting here. Reserve flotilla, they said. Told the CEOs what happened. They didn’t believe us, insisted on seeing my ship’s records. Then they told us to proceed on duties assigned and turned and headed for the jump point for Varandal. Just left us. Then the Alliance appeared, and there was a fight.” The Syndic commander gulped and breathed deeply. “Afterward, our track crossed some Alliance escape pods. Standing orders. Take prisoners when possible. We did.”
Iger waited, looking slightly helpless as the Syndic sat shivering, her eyes haunted. Geary motioned to the chief. “Tell the lieutenant to give the Syndic a break. See if she needs any medical care. Captain Desjani, Co-President Rione, please come with me.”
They followed him out of the intelligence spaces, none of them speaking again until they reached the fleet conference room and Geary had sealed the hatch. “There only seems to be one possibility for what happened at Kalixa.”
“They did it,” Desjani said with a scowl. “The aliens thought we were going to Kalixa, or might go there. They eliminated a gate we could use.”
“Why not wait until we went there to do that? Then the gate’s energy discharge could have hit this fleet.”
Her scowl deepened. “They’d have to know… Sir, that’s the answer. They can’t track us anymore. They’re used to knowing where we are or where we’re going in something close enough to real time to be usable. But since we discovered the alien worms in the navigation and communications systems on our ships and scrubbed them out, they can’t do that. They made an estimate of when we’d arrive in Kalixa if we went straight there and blew the gate accordingly.”
“Do the travel times work for that?” Geary ran out the calculations, then shook his head. “Maybe your idea is correct, but they blew that gate long enough ago for the Syndic cruiser to have jumped here with the news before we arrived. That would’ve been too early to catch us.”
“Not if we hadn’t uncharacteristically lingered at Dilawa.” Desjani brought up the travel times and pointed to the result.
He started to answer, but no words came. The figures didn’t lie. A quick transit of Dilawa followed by a jump of the fleet directly on a path for Kalixa would have brought it there a little less than a week before now. Perfect timing.
Rione was shaking her head. “Even when you screw up, it turns out to be a good thing.”
“He’s guided,” Desjani insisted.
“Perhaps,” Rione replied. “Though I understand that good planning can have all the benefits of divine intervention without the arbitrary and capricious drawbacks. Be that as it may, uncharacteristic hesitation and characteristic avoidance of Syndic star systems with hypernet gates seems to have served this fleet well.” Her expression tightened. “An entire star system and every human in it wiped out. The aliens have started what we’ve feared, triggering the collapse of hypernet gates.”
“We’ve still got time to defuse this,” Geary insisted. “It was a shot in the dark, and it missed. By the time the aliens confirm that our fleet wasn’t at Kalixa—”
“This isn’t just about the aliens! Don’t you understand yet?” Rione glared at both of them. “The Syndic reserve flotilla was waiting here for this fleet, then when it received the report from that heavy cruiser about what happened at Kalixa, the reserve flotilla headed for Varandal. Obviously the news of the collapse of the hypernet gate at Kalixa triggered some modification of their orders. Now think! Why would they go to Varandal after hearing about Kalixa?”
Desjani answered first, her voice strained. “The Alliance hypernet gate at Varandal. They’re going to try to collapse the gate in retaliation for Kalixa because they think we did it.”
“Exactly.” Rione was almost trembling with suppressed emotion. “The cycle of retaliation has already begun what may be humanity’s last offensive. The aliens have gotten their wish. It’s already in motion. We’re too late.”
ELEVEN
“It’s not too late!” Geary snapped. “The Syndics haven’t blown that gate at Varandal yet, and if we can there get fast enough, we can stop them. We can stop this whole thing, and we will!”
“How?” Rione demanded.
“Captain Cresida has reported that she’s been able to make enough progress on her design to protect against gate collapse. We’ll need to get one installed on Varandal and every other hypernet gate we can as fast as we can and hope the aliens don’t realize what we’re doing until too late.”
“What about Captain Tulev’s list?”
“It’s been overtaken by events. We don’t have any time left, and a priority list would be too complicated to get across in the time we have available. If we spread the word that the hypernet gates are threats, everyone will start putting up those systems of Cresida’s.”
Desjani pressed her palms against her forehead. “Even if we do stop the Syndics, why wouldn’t the aliens blow the gate as soon as they know we’re in Varandal? No, they won’t know. It’ll take them a while to learn. Long enough to install Cresida’s system?”
“We’ll have to hope so. We’re lucky we picked up that Syndic,” he added. “If not, we wouldn’t have known about Kalixa.”
“If her ship hadn’t survived and told the Syndic reserve flotilla about Kalixa,” Desjani pointed out coldly, “then they wouldn’t have gone off to collapse the Alliance gate at Varandal. I personally could have waited to hear about Kalixa if it would have avoided that.”
“She told us something else important.” Rione’s eyes were still hooded with gloom. “A Syndic merchant ship there had copies of our records from Lakota. That confirms that the information is being spread throughout the Syndicate Worlds, even though the Syndic leaders are doubtless trying to stop it.”
Geary walked to the comm panel. “We need a meeting. Now.” Less than ten minutes later he was facing the virtual presences of Captains Cresida, Duellos, and Tulev, as well as Desjani and Rione. It took only a couple of minutes to explain what they’d learned from the Syndic commander, then Geary turned to Cresida. “You told me the basic work was done. How close are you to having a design that can be fabricated and installed as soon as we reach Alliance space?”
“Close enough, sir.” She shrugged apologetically. “It can be refined, but it’s done. It’s got a lot of estimates factored in, but it should be effective enough to dampen the shock wave to levels low enough not to threaten a star system. There’s a basic emergency level add-on that will at least lower the intensity of the energy discharge so it won’t cause significant harm, and a more elaborate system that can be installed afterward on top of the other. That should guarantee the gate collapse is completely harmless.”
“How fast can they be made and placed on hypernet gates?” Rione asked.
“As fast as their priority level, Madam Co-President.” Cresida shrugged again. “We just need to convince the Alliance political authorities and our military chain of command of the urgency.”