The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

Geary barely noticed as the last four courier ships tried to claw around for another run at the Alliance formation, did not feel any elation as specter missiles pursuing those four ships caught them in their turns and blew them apart.

His display replayed a slow-motion re-creation of the instant of contact. Some courier ships vanishing into irregular blots of dust and energy as lucky shots scored hits, others coming onward, aiming now clearly for the Dancers, who, damn them, seemed to be almost motionless as they hung near Invincible, and the rest targeting the assault transports and auxiliaries, the Dancers darting aside at the last moments to frustrate the attackers trying to hit them, Titan, Typhoon, and Mistral almost lined up relative to the attackers and twisting too slowly to evade the courier ships whose vectors aimed at them, hell-lance and grapeshot fire pouring from every Alliance ship in a last-ditch defensive effort, Orion rolling slightly in her track, coming over just a small amount, just enough that five surviving courier ships heading for Titan and the two assault transports instead struck Orion either glancing blows or direct hits.

Even a battleship couldn’t withstand that number of impacts by that much mass at those kinds of velocities. The energy liberated by the collisions was vast enough to reduce Orion and all five courier ships to gas and dust.

Orion was gone, along with Commander Shen and his entire crew.

“All attackers destroyed,” Lieutenant Castries reported, her tone not jubilant but rather stunned. “Orion has been destroyed. No other damage to fleet ships.”

“Damn them,” Geary whispered. He could understand the hate Desjani still felt for the Syndics, understand why the Alliance fleet had retaliated and retaliated for such acts, losing track of its own honor and morality along the way, understand why the need to do the right thing had been forgotten in the desire for revenge.

“They’re going to claim they didn’t know anything about this,” Desjani said in a low, savage voice. “The Syndics in charge here. They’ll say they had no idea whose ships those were. You know they will.”

“Yes.” And there was no proof to the contrary. He was certain of that. The courier ships and their one-man crews had been blown to pieces. Dead men and women tell no tales.

He wanted to hurt the Syndics in this star system, hurt all of them, not just those who gave the orders but also those who stood by and let such things happen, whose own actions and passivity supported their leaders.

Don’t. Don’t do anything that will make this worse.

But Orion was gone, victim of an attack that could not possibly have accomplished anything but destruction.

“Admiral.” Rione’s voice broke through his rage. She sounded odd, too, as if emotions were boiling just beneath the rigid mask of her face. “I wanted to ask, Admiral, if the hypernet gate had been damaged during the fight so close to it. It would be a great loss to this star system if their hypernet gate was damaged so badly during this unnecessary and brutal attack that the gate collapsed.”

It took him several seconds to get it, then Geary felt a cold resolve warring with the heat of his anger. He touched a control. “Captain Smythe.”

Tanuki was only a few light-seconds distant, so the reply came quickly. “Yes, Admiral?” Smythe asked in a subdued voice.

“I am worried that the hypernet gate may have sustained damage from stray shots or from debris from some of those courier ships. I want it inspected at close range to make sure it has not sustained the level of damage that would cause it to collapse. Even though the safe collapse mechanism will prevent a devastating pulse of energy from being emitted by the collapse, such an event would still cripple commerce through this star system for the foreseeable future.”

Smythe pursed his lips. “Admiral, the fight wasn’t that close—” He hesitated, a light of understanding dawning in his eyes, then nodded. “But the gate still might have sustained damage. Damage we can’t see, except up close. Catastrophic damage. It would be . . . so unfortunate for this star system if the gate were to collapse.”

“Yes, Captain Smythe, it would be. Will you see to it?”

“I will, Admiral. Perhaps some of the debris from Orion will prove to have impacted on some of the gate tethers. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, Captain Smythe. Ironic. I’m going to slow the fleet to give your engineers time to do a thorough job.”

“Oh, we will do a thorough job, Admiral. Have no fear of that.” Smythe’s grin as he saluted bared his teeth but held no humor.

Rione’s image was still visible, showing no reaction to Geary’s orders. “Admiral,” she said when he closed the call to Smythe, “we should contact the Syndic authorities in this star system, both to formally report our presence and to register a formal protest over the attack on us.”