“I thought you liked her!” he protested.
“I understand her. That doesn’t mean I like her. Aren’t you ever going to figure out things like that?”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
He sat silently after that and actually dozed a few times in his seat, waking to realize with a guilty conscience that the watch-standers on the bridge had been working as silently as possible so as not to disturb him.
“Admiral,” Lieutenant Castries reported, “the Dancers should have jumped one minute ago based on our projections.”
“Thank you.” Geary stared at his display, trying to decide what to do. It would be another six hours before the light reached this part of the star system showing whether the Dancers had actually jumped. He could wait for that confirmation. Maybe he should wait for it. But every hour, every minute, brought them closer to the possibility the Syndics might block this gate and leave his task force stranded at Midway, or once more forced to go home through a deadly gauntlet set up by the Syndics.
“The Dancers have proven they can take care of themselves,” Geary said out loud. “My responsibilities to the Alliance and to the crews of these warships require me to return now rather than risk them by waiting for unnecessary confirmation of the Dancer ships’ departure.”
“I concur,” Desjani said.
He brought the task force around to approach the nearby hypernet gate, wondering if he would ever see Midway again.
“Hypernet key set for Indras,” Desjani said. “Field size set to encompass all ships of the task force.”
“Do it,” Geary said.
And once more the nearly infinite multitude of stars vanished.
Watch the many stars. Watch the different stars. What the hell did those things mean?
They came out at Indras to find a star system under attack.
“Who is it?” Geary demanded as his display rapidly updated, revealing that numerous Syndic installations had been turned into new craters by bombardments. Dispersing wreckage marked the remnants of several merchant ships and one of the Syndic light cruisers that had been here before.
“They must have just left, Admiral,” Lieutenant Yuon said, his eyes darting over the sensor findings. “There aren’t any—”
“A HuK just blew up!” Lieutenant Castries announced. “Something just ripped it apart! Whoever did this is still here.”
“Enigmas,” Geary said.
“We can spot enigmas, Admiral,” Desjani reminded him. “I’ll have my security teams sweep our systems for quantum worms again just in case they got some past our last routine scans.” Desjani spun in her seat to face her watch-standers. “If we can’t spot whoever is hitting Indras, we can spot what they’re doing. Track weapons firing, track bombardment projectile launches, track anything that shows where and what these attackers are.”
Geary hit the command to talk to his intelligence cell. “Lieutenant Iger, I need answers. Who has just hit Indras so hard? There must be something in the comms in this star system that tells us.”
Iger looked rattled but pulled himself together. “Sir, there’s a lot of chatter about dark ships.”
“Dark ships?”
“Yes, sir. Dark warships. There’s— Here’s something else. It sounds like the dark warships showed up and opened fire without any communication or warning. Most of the targets that we can see have been hit were Syndic government or military, but some are civilian. Indras has taken a lot of damage.”
“Captain,” Lieutenant Yuon called, “our systems are not registering any signs of weapons fire. There are zero indications of any attacking ships in this star system.”
Geary fixed a hard look on Iger. “Did you hear that? Do you concur that we can’t see any sign they’re still here?”
“Yes, Admiral. I have to agree.”
“When did the dark ships leave? Can you tell?”
“Admiral…” Iger shook his head helplessly. “Even though we can’t spot any trace of them, from what we’re picking up from the Syndics, they are still here.”
Fifteen
“Lieutenant Iger,” Geary said with slow force, “do you know anything about this? Anything that could explain this? Even in rumors?”
“No, sir. I have no idea what’s going on here.” Iger sounded uncharacteristically angry. “There’s something… odd. We’re intercepting video that’s supposed to be showing the dark ships, and there’s nothing on it. I would think everyone at Indras has gone crazy, but there’s no doubt that destruction has taken place and is ongoing.”
Geary fixed a glare on his display, which continued to report attacks under way but offered no trace of any attackers. “Communications. Set up a conference call for me, Captain Desjani, Captain Badaya on Illustrious, and Captain Tulev on Leviathan.”
A little more than a minute later, Geary appeared to face Captains Badaya and Tulev in their command seats on their own ships, Desjani also linked in next to him. “Does anyone have any idea what’s happening here?”
“They’re definitely under attack,” Badaya said. “I recommend we maintain all of our ships at full combat readiness until we figure out who is attacking them and whether they are also hostile to us.”
“It is like the enigmas,” Tulev said. “But we have rescreened the systems on Leviathan and can find no trace of software of any kind that might be corrupting our systems to hide these attackers from us.”
“What would the enigmas be doing at Indras, anyway?” Badaya demanded. “This is probably some Syndic secret weapon that has turned on them. Or something one of their rebel star systems is using to hit back.”
“The locals are reporting that they can see what they call the dark ships,” Geary said. “Why would the attackers of a Syndic star system blind our sensors and not those of the Syndics? The Syndic government itself has no reason to attack one of their own star systems, and from the amount of damage we can see, the attacking force has to be much larger than anything we believe the Syndics or any rebellious star systems have in this part of space.”
“If it’s a Syndic worm,” Badaya began again.
“We would have found it already!” Desjani insisted. “My code monkeys are good. As good as they come.”
“Could the Dancers have planted something in our systems?” Tulev asked. “Something as different from what we know as the enigma quantum-coded worms were?”
“That’s not impossible,” Geary said. “But why? What possible reason could they have for doing that, and why would the Dancers somehow assist whoever is attacking Indras?”
“I just double-checked,” Desjani said. “We’ve maintained full isolation of the comm gear that talks to the Dancers. The only way they could have infected our systems is if they have worms that can leave the gear, invisibly crawl across the deck to other compartments, and wriggle into the equipment there. And if they can do that, then we’re dealing with tech so much higher and different than ours that the odds of even spotting it seem impossible.”
“Then what about the Kicks?” Badaya asked, instantly shifting focus. “We had that ship of theirs with us for a long time. Something aboard that, which leapfrogged through the Marine and Fleet systems, slowly infecting every ship.”
“A contagion off of Invincible?” Geary considered that, his eyes shifting briefly to his display as another Syndic installation at Indras blew up under the impact of bombardment projectiles that were invisible to the Alliance warships.
“These can’t be Kick ships attacking Indras,” Desjani protested. “How would they have gotten here? And the attackers are using bombardment projectiles, which as far as we know the Kicks don’t even carry. Besides, according to my people, the stuff we found on Invincible was totally different from our own. How could Kick software have migrated to our systems when their systems and software don’t match ours at all?”