“Understood,” Geary said. In his mind’s eye it was all too easy to visualize what was happening on the freighter. The air increasingly unbreathable, the refugees panicking, the crew probably withdrawing onto the bridge and the engineering compartments and sealing the hatches for their own protection. He could see Implacable’s vector, see how the battle cruiser was accelerating all out for the intercept, but soon the warship would have to pivot and begin braking, using those same mighty propulsion units to slow her again so that she could match velocity with the lumbering freighter.
He, and Implacable, were doing all that could be done given the distances and the realities of acceleration and deceleration.
He prayed it would be enough.
Inspire was pivoting again, her own propulsion units flaring as the battle cruiser slid into position amidst the swarm of battered refugee ships, a lion suddenly present among a herd of sheep. On the outer edges of the gaggle of freighters, the Alliance light cruisers were also gliding into position, like cheetahs aiming to keep the herd from scattering away from the prime predator.
“Admiral, there are shuttles launching from ground forces bases on the planet.”
“How many shuttles?” Duellos demanded.
“Eight… nine, sir. Here’s three more coming around the curve of the planet.”
“Twelve,” Duellos said to Geary. “Enough?”
“Probably all Sissons has got,” Geary muttered in reply. He gestured to Inspire’s communications watch. “I need a maximum override space shipping broadcast. All circuits.”
“Yes, sir.” It took only a couple of seconds before the chief nodded back to him. “You’re ready, Admiral. Channel six.”
“Thank you.” Geary put on a stern expression, then hit the control. “All ships carrying refugees, this is Admiral Geary of the Alliance fleet. I am here to restore order, and I will do so. All activity is to cease on your ships. Armed and armored Alliance ground forces and Marines will be arriving on your ships. Any disobedience or unrest will be met with appropriate levels of response to reestablish calm and security. The commanding officers or executives of every ship carrying refugees are to contact the Alliance battle cruiser Inspire immediately and report the status of their ships. Any ships requiring assistance to restore order are to notify me on Inspire immediately.”
What else would Syndics need to convince them to follow instructions? Geary recalled the phrasings he had heard at Midway among the former Syndics there. “Any failure to comply with my orders will be dealt with by whatever means are required. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”
He had barely finished when another high-priority transmission came in. Not a message this time, but a direct call.
Colonel Galland spat out her words furiously. “An update! A damned, useless, bug-riddled software update that knocked my entire wing out of operation! My techs are restoring all systems to prior-day configurations, but my FACs will be out of commission for at least another hour while we do the resets, then bring everything online again.”
“An update?” Geary questioned. “Someone planted worms in an update?”
She shook her head. “We haven’t found any worms. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Right now, I don’t know if the sabotage was malicious or just the routine sabotage-by-software-update that we usually encounter.”
“What’s the status of your supply shuttles that the refugees were storming?”
“There were three mated to freighters when the rioting started. One got clear. Two are stuck, with refugees packed into them and the air locks, and the flight crews locked down on the control deck. If those shuttles pull away, every refugee in them will die.”
That settled one question. “I’ve got one platoon of Marines in riot gear. I’ll send half to each ship where one of your shuttles is stranded so they can clear out the mess.”
“Thanks, Admiral.” Galland grinned ferociously. “I see ground forces on the way up, too. What did you do to General Sissons to get him to cooperate?”
“That’s between me and the general,” Geary said, even though he knew that in cases like this security only slightly slowed down universal knowledge of what had been in the messages he had exchanged with Sissons. Good gossip had a way of defeating any barrier and often seemed to exceed the light-speed limit in how fast it got around. “You’ve got a couple of FACs at the second gas giant, Sextus. There’ll be a new freighter headed that way.”
“The one claiming its power core is unstable? You’re sending my guys a bomb? Gee, thanks, Admiral.”
“You’re welcome.”
Duellos broke in. “Admiral, two of the freighters have lit off main propulsion and ignored warnings to stop.”
“Have the light cruisers nearest them fire warning shots,” Geary ordered. “And tell the freighter crews that if we have to fire on the freighters to stop them, we’ll be aiming at the control decks of the ships.”
He turned back to Galland to see her watching him appraisingly. “Admiral, as my FACs in orbit regain operational capability, I’ll place them temporarily under your command. Once I get enough going to operate on their own, I’ll have the squadron commander take over and coordinate with you. Are you all right with that?”
“That’s fine,” Geary said. “Does your squadron commander have experience working with ground forces?”
“Here? No. Sissons claimed he never had time or resources or money for joint ops. Do you have experience working with ground forces, Admiral?”
Geary smiled. “A little over a century ago. Two Alliance warships and a couple of platoons of ground forces. I was just a department head on one of the ships.”
“Oh.” Galland grinned back at him. “A little rusty, then?”
“Yeah. Let’s get this done, Colonel. No, wait. What do you have on the refugees? None of the material I’ve seen since arriving here tells me anything about them.”
“They’re Syndics.”
“Are they?” Geary asked. “Is Batara still under Syndic control?”
“I don’t know, Admiral,” Galland admitted. “I don’t have any data on the refugees. I’ve had my hands full dealing with the freighter executives. The aerospace intel capability in this region was at Yokai, and as far as I know they all went home when everything else there closed down. Interrogations and collection at Adriana are the responsibility of ground forces intel.”
As the call ended, Geary turned to Duellos. “Did you copy all of that?”
“Yes, Admiral.” Duellos gestured behind him. “The two misbehaving freighters have seen the error of their ways thanks to very near misses from hell lances and have shut down their propulsion. My Marines are loading into my shuttles now. I need a rules-of-engagement question answered for them, though. They have CRV, riot-dispersal gas, and CRX, riot-suppression gas. The Marines want to use the CRX.”
“What’s wrong with the CRV?” Geary asked.
Duellos swung a hand across his controls and repeated Geary’s question to the image of a Marine sergeant in battle armor that appeared.
“It’s like this, Admiral,” she said. “CRV is designed to disperse riots, to make people run by doing real unpleasant stuff to their eyes, ears, noses, skin, and so on. Nothing too bad, just real uncomfortable. But there’s no place on a ship like that for anyone to run, and from the readings I’m seeing, the life support on those tubs is already shaky. We drop a bunch of CRV into that, and the rioting might get a whole lot worse as people try to run away from it but have nowhere to run.”
“Could we end up with dead?” Duellos asked.