“No.” Geary saw some of the tension go out of the men and women before him. “No one has suggested that we agree to defend the Syndicate Worlds. Such an agreement could be too easily twisted.” Many nods came in response to that. No one here trusted the Syndics at all. “But stopping an invasion is another matter. We don’t know what the goals of the enigma race are, and we don’t know where they would stop if the former Syndic border collapsed.”
“You’re not talking about a threat to the Alliance, are you? That’s so distant.”
“Four weeks’ travel time from the border with the Alliance to the border facing the aliens,” Desjani said. “By hypernet.”
“Can they use the hypernet?” Warspite’s captain asked.
“It’s possible,” Geary answered. “We have reason to believe that the aliens may in fact have covertly provided the hypernet technology to both the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds.”
Everyone stared again, then Commander Neeson spoke as if to himself. “That would explain … there’s so many things about the hypernet we barely understand … and the quantum-probability worms came from hypernet keys, didn’t they?”
“Apparently so.”
“Why?” Badaya asked, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “Give both sides such technology? What was their game?”
Duellos seemed to be looking into the distance. “The hypernets provided boosts to the economies of the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds just as the costs of the war were growing too great. They also greatly simplified fighting the war by improving logistics and allowing the rapid transfer and concentration of forces.”
“They wanted us to keep fighting?” Badaya leaned back, his face reddening, but his expression thoughtful as well as angry. “Weaken us. Both sides. Set us up for their own takeover.”
“That may be what was happening,” Geary agreed. “Our intent is to get across to these aliens that such meddling in the affairs of humanity will not be tolerated and that internal conflicts will not prevent part of humanity from striking back at any attempt to invade human space.”
“Which may require a battle,” Jane Geary said. “A battle against a foe of unknown strength and unknown resources, with unknown weapons and unknown defensive capabilities.”
“That’s right. But if we don’t fight now, we’ll have to fight some other time, when we’re weaker, and they’re stronger. We have a chance to draw a line in the sand at that border, make it clear that they cannot force humanity to retreat.”
That went over right. He could see spines stiffen at the idea of being forced to retreat. They believed that they had never retreated from the Syndics. They wouldn’t accept the idea of retreating from anyone or anything else.
“You said they’ve taken Syndic planets before this,” Captain Parr of Incredible remarked. “Planets with some humans left on them? But we don’t know what happened to those humans?”
“No, we don’t. Nothing has ever been heard from any humans in areas taken by the aliens.” That bothered everyone, he could tell. It wasn’t simply fears born of millennia of stories about alien races intent on enslaving or destroying humanity, stories that in recent centuries had come to be regarded more and more as fantasy since no intelligent nonhuman species had been discovered until now. No, Geary thought, it was about leaving people behind. The fleet didn’t do that by choice, and if it did, it always vowed to somehow return for those left behind. In practice, those vows had rarely been able to be carried out, but that didn’t mean they were any less heartfelt.
Badaya glowered at the star display. “They’re Syndics, but they’re human. Or maybe they won’t be Syndics anymore. They’ll hang or shoot the CEOs and set up governments that we can deal with. These star systems that need to be evacuated. The Syndics can’t do it, can they?”
“No,” Geary agreed. “Not enough ships, not enough time. You know how hard it is to evacuate even one star system, even drawing on all the resources of the Alliance. Millions of people would be abandoned on those worlds.”
“Then we need to get there and stop the aliens! They may have been able to mangle the Syndics, but they’ll find the Alliance fleet on full attack is a threat beyond their abilities to match!”
A spontaneous roar of approval followed Badaya’s words.
After the conference ended, Geary stayed standing, wondering how long the enthusiasm for another offensive action against another foe would last.
Duellos had remained, and shook his head, smiling wryly. “Captain Badaya sees the fleet as a hammer, the greatest hammer humanity has ever fielded. Once he saw the problem as a nail, he was bound to urge the fleet’s use.”
“Yeah,” Geary agreed. “Badaya has given me plenty of headaches in the past, but his direct approaches can be useful.” That sounded disturbingly like something Rione would say.
Desjani suddenly laughed. Noticing Geary and Duellos staring at her, she pointed at the star display. “That Syndic CEO at Midway is going to be waiting for help to arrive, expecting the aliens to show up in force at any time, and instead of a Syndic flotilla dashing to the rescue, she’s going to see the Alliance fleet come popping out of her hypernet gate. Can you imagine? She’s going to bounce so high from shock that she’ll clear atmosphere.”
It took a few days to get damage repaired as much as possible. In a perfect world, Geary would have sent off the most badly damaged ships on a journey home, but even though the Alliance was manufacturing more Syndic hypernet keys using the data taken from the one on Dauntless, none of those keys had been available before the fleet left. Only ships accompanied by Dauntless could use the Syndic hypernet, so the damaged ships would have to stay with the fleet, accompanying the auxiliaries. The auxiliaries also distributed replacement fuel cells, missiles, and grapeshot to the fleet, along with the spare parts and repair materials they had been manufacturing.
He could either jump the fleet for Mandalon or back to Zevos, and chose Zevos since that star system had a hypernet gate. Even though the Syndicate Worlds and the Alliance were now formally and technically at peace, Geary still felt like an occupying power as he led the fleet to the jump point, knowing that every man, woman, and child in the star system was watching the Alliance fleet with dread and distrust.
If Desjani was bothered by the scrutiny of distrustful Syndics, she didn’t show it. “Back to Zevos through jump space, then by hypernet to Midway. If the Syndic data can be trusted, we’ll be cutting it very fine, getting there about a day before the ultimatum expires.”
“I don’t think the Syndics will complain.”
“They’d better not.”
He called Carabali. “General, I just want to be sure we’ve off-loaded every Syndic guest your Marines picked up from wrecked warships.”
“Every one of our guests was escorted into repaired escape pods and launched toward safe locations,” Carabali confirmed. “The fleet database reported that there is one Syndic still remaining aboard Dauntless, but I was informed that he was a special case.”
“That’s right, General. We’re taking CEO Boyens back to his home.”
“What about our own POWs here, Admiral?” Carabali asked. “They surely want to go home, too.”
“I don’t want to load them now,” Geary explained. “They’d overcrowd our ships, and there’s no sense risking those liberated POWs in combat if we end up fighting the aliens. Once we finish with the aliens at Midway, we’ll come back through here to pick up our own POWs from the Syndics and take them home with us. I’ve talked to the senior POWs to explain that, and the new Syndic leaders know they’d better treat our people very well until we get back.” Geary smiled. “I personally told those Syndics that if they didn’t take good care of our people, then they’d be getting individual visits from Alliance Marines when we returned.”