The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

“You had a decoy comm line, too?” Geary asked, tapping controls to bring up a display showing the Marines aboard Invincible as well as a direct line to General Carabali.

“Of course.” Despite his light words, Lagemann sounded worried. “The indications of the boarding party are still scattered and weak. They must all be in stealth armor, which means Syndic special forces. We know they’re on board, but not how many and not exactly where. We’re trying to find out more without revealing the real location of the area we occupy inside Invincible.”

“You and Major Dietz certainly called things right. What about your sentries at the air lock? Did you lose them?”

“No,” Lagemann said with a half smile. “They weren’t there. We pulled them back inside with the rest of us when those suicide attackers came at us. Maybe that was part of the Syndic boarding plan, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s just as well. We might have lost a squad of Marines before we knew we were facing a boarding party in stealth gear. As it is, the Marines with me are fully alert and armoring up.”

Geary paused in his reply, glancing at Desjani.

Desjani had uttered an obscene term that he hadn’t realized she knew, and now continued speaking with white-hot rage. “A diversion! Those damned suicide ships were a diversion! While we were dealing with them, stealthed shuttles were able to intercept Invincible and put their assault force aboard!”

“Yes, Orion died because of a diversion.” That should have made Geary’s own anger flare hotter, but instead he had gone bitter cold inside. “The shuttles the Syndic boarding party used must still be near Invincible.” There was a maneuver to deal with that, a preplanned operation he only had to order into action. “Search and Destroy Pattern Sigma.” He hit his comm control. “All light cruisers and destroyers in First Fleet, immediate execute Search and Destroy Pattern Sigma. Reference point for search is Invincible. Search targets are Syndic stealth shuttles. Engage and destroy any detected.”

“Search and Destroy Pattern Sigma?” Desjani checked her database. “I’ve never actually done one of those. How old is that pattern?”

“More than a century,” Geary said. “But it’s in the maneuvering systems of every ship in this fleet. All they have to do is punch it in, and the fleet’s automated maneuvering systems will get the right ships moving to the right places based on how many ships the formation has for the mission.”

“That’s a lot,” Desjani said, smiling unpleasantly as she watched her display.

Every destroyer and every light cruiser in the First Fleet, roughly two hundred warships, was swinging into a tight, overlapping search pattern focused on the region of space near Invincible and the track she had taken through space. Stealthed shuttles, especially if they were not maneuvering at all, could be incredibly hard to spot. But with hundreds of ships searching, all of their sensor readings being combined and compared automatically by fleet combat systems, even the best stealth technology would find it hard to avoid revealing the sort of anomalies that combat systems would pounce on.

If only I’d had time to implement that search pattern as a defensive measure before the Syndics got aboard Invincible, Geary thought bitterly. But that was the whole point of the suicide attack, to keep us too busy and too distracted to even think about other threats.

“They’re at the decoy main engineering control,” Admiral Lagemann announced. “Lamarr sensors on the main hatch report they are being spoofed. And . . . the Persian Donkey there has ceased emitting.”

One decoy dead. Geary fought down an absurd sense of sorrow at the “death” of the faithful and deceitful little Marine Donkey. “What about the decoy bridge?”

Major Dietz’s image had also appeared near Geary. Dietz was in full combat armor. “The Syndic boarding party should have coordinated to hit both targets at the same time, but probably ran into delays because of the unknown deck plans of this ship. There go the Lamarr sensors at the decoy bridge. Decoy bridge has been hit. That Donkey is dead, too.”

“We’ve got everything running on minimum power in this area,” Lagemann said. “We’re all in our suits, so we shut down life support and everything not necessary to communicate and keep track of the action. The boarders will have a hard time finding us, and if they do, they’ll find Marines here ready for them.”

“Admiral Lagemann,” Geary said, “those Syndic soldiers can’t be given the run of Invincible.”