The Lost Fleet: Courageous

If they did, Geary couldn’t see or feel it. He glanced at Desjani and saw her utter confidence that he would reach the right decision. Whatever that was. Rione was eyeing Geary, her expression stern, almost challenging him to believe her. Colonel Carabali simply waited, her feelings unreadable behind a professionally emotionless mask. The longer Geary waited, the more likely the decision would be taken out of his hands by developing events. He had a duty to those Marines, a responsibility to make a call, to make it clear who was accountable if the worst happened. Odd, it was usually Rione warning him about the worst that could happen…

That was usually the case. Rione the politician never liked having any part of the fleet running risks. Yet here she was urging a course of action that had his Marine commander and one of Geary’s hardest-charging ship captains recommending caution. Either Rione had gone crazy, or his ancestors had sent a sign. Through her.

Geary breathed a quick prayer. “I think Co-President Rione is right. Keep the Marines in there and occupy the entire facility.”

Carabali, her face rigid, saluted. “Yes, sir.” Her screen blanked as she passed on the orders.

Geary looked down, hoping he hadn’t let a sense of urgency override his own common sense. When he looked up, the tactical display showed Marines swarming deeper into the installation, segment after segment of the Syndic facility glowing green to show it had been cleared and occupied.

Nothing had blown up yet.

He gave in to temptation and called up a view from one of the Marine junior officers. Now he had a window floating before him showing the view from that officer’s helmet. This part of the facility was open to the surface, so the Marines were moving through an area with no atmosphere. An occasional light illuminated part of the equipment the Marines were moving past, the sharp-edged beams centered on whatever needed to be lit, since the light didn’t spread at all without any air to do the job. The shadows were just as sharp-edged and as black as the lit areas were bright.

There was always something spooky about abandoned places, a sense that the former occupants hadn’t really left and were somewhere just out of sight, watching these intruders come into their world. Because so little changed in abandoned facilities on airless worlds, a place deserted moments before could feel just as haunted as one left empty centuries ago. Had someone else walked here an hour ago, or yesterday, or a hundred years in the past? Even though he’d seen the defenders moving through these areas a short time before, the mining facility felt like that, empty and silent on the outside, even though inside the buried buildings equipment still functioned.

An airtight hatch loomed before the Marine officer. Geary watched as two enlisted Marines attached physical taps to the air lock locking mechanism and overrode the coded entry system. Weapons leveled at the hatch as it began to swing open, one Marine near the hatch tossing a small object in through the growing gap and then huddling back as the magnetic pulse charge detonated inside the lock to fry the circuits on nearby weapons, enemy survival suits, and detonators for booby traps.

Then the Marines were inside, moving through empty passageways, kicking in or blowing open doors, searching for anything out of place, anything that even looked like a bomb.

Geary rapped his forehead in exasperation as he realized he’d forgotten something that could really help, then slapped his communications circuit. “Captain Tyrosian. Your ships are now being given access to the views from the Marine landing force occupying the mining facility. I assume the engineers on the auxiliaries know the sort of equipment we’re dealing with and will be able to identify anything that doesn’t belong. Get some of them watching the Marines as fast as possible.”

Tyrosian’s reply took a bit longer than it should since the auxiliaries were now in the center of the Alliance formation. “Sir,” she replied hesitantly, “my personnel don’t usually play any direct role in operations.”

Fighting down an urge to yell, Geary spoke firmly. “They are this time. I want qualified people observing those feeds as quickly as you can get them on there, and I want to know immediately if they see anything they regard as suspicious.”

Before Tyrosian’s reply could come in, Geary saw another window pop up with Colonel Carabali in it. “Someone’s sending my assault force’s feeds to the engineers on the auxiliaries,” she reported, frowning.

“That someone is me, Colonel.”

“I must protest, sir. They’re noncombatant support personnel without a need for direct real-time access to my assault force.”

Geary tried not to let aggravation show. “They won’t do any harm.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Carabali stated stiffly, “engineers are capable of wreaking total havoc in the real world if not closely supervised, and I do not have the luxury of the time to be able to so supervise them.”