The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

“Because you’re Black Jack coming back to do something. Because we’ve got the former Kick superbattleship with us. Because we’ve got the six Dancer ships with us. Because Bradamont came here with six Syndic freighters and stirred them up. Because they’re idiots.”

“Admiral Timbale is not an idiot,” Geary said, trying to salvage the last shreds of his tranquillity.

“If he’s still in command at Varandal.” Desjani gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Be ready for anything when we leave jump.”

“You know, I am the admiral here.”

“Then I respectfully advise that the admiral be prepared for any possible event when we exit jump, sir.”

Sighing and rubbing his eyes, Geary straightened in the command seat. He knew better than to point out that Tanya was echoing the warnings that Rione had given him a few days before. I didn’t think about this sort of thing when I married the commanding officer of my flagship.

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Geary insisted.

“Yes, you— Never mind. We’re about to arrive.” Desjani gave him one more admonishing glance, then focused on her display.

He did the same, seeing one of the lights of jump space suddenly erupt seemingly directly in their path. There was no telling how far off the light was, no way to tell how distant anything was in jump space, but Geary had the sense that Dauntless was plunging right into the light as it dropped out of jump.

Intakes of breath by the others on the bridge told him that they had seen the same thing.

Then the welcome blackness of normal space and the lights of countless stars appeared, including the brighter glare of the dot of light that was the nearby star Varandal.

No alarms sounded as the fleet’s sensors looked around, taking in the situation. By the time Geary had shaken off the brain fuzz caused by the transition out of jump space, his display had updated to show a comfortingly routine-appearing picture of human activity at Varandal.

Until the display hiccuped, and the images of more than a dozen Alliance stealth shuttles appeared near Ambaru station. “What the hell are they doing out?”

“Ambaru must see them,” Desjani muttered, checking her own data. “They’ve got their tracking emissions on. That’s how we can see them this far out.”

He called up the data and saw that she was right. The stealth shuttles were putting out tiny emissions that normally would look like background noise within a star system. Only sensors alerted to look for particular patterns hidden within that noise would spot the tracking signatures. “A drill? Why the hell?”

“Maybe they know,” Desjani suggested, pointing to the images of an Alliance light cruiser and two destroyers only half a light-hour from the jump point. “Coupe, Bandolier, and Spearhand. What are they doing out here?”

“Heading back in toward the star,” Geary said, frowning. “And no sign of those six Syndic freighters.”

“No debris from them, either,” Desjani pointed out.

“Let’s head in ourselves. We’ll send in the standard arrival reports and nothing else while I wait to hear from Timbale.”

“And if Timbale isn’t still here?”

“Then I’ll hear from whoever took over from him.”

It took a few hours, of course. Coupe and Bandolier were tight-lipped when Geary called them, saying only that they had been carrying out special maneuvers on orders from Admiral Timbale. But there had been enough chatter among other ships and stations at Varandal to provide a partial picture of events as Lieutenant Iger pieced it together.

“The Syndic, er, that is, the Midway freighters were here, Admiral. They showed up and asked for the prisoners from the Syndic Reserve Flotilla that you destroyed. There was some sort of major flap, though. Commandos and Marines on Ambaru station, warships moving around quickly, and a lot of high-priority, highly classified message traffic flying.”

“But the freighters got out safely? Along with Captain Bradamont?”

“Sir, I’ve seen no mention of Captain Bradamont, but otherwise, yes, it looks like they jumped out a few days ago.”

When Admiral Timbale’s message finally showed up, he confirmed that. “Captain Bradamont was with them, though only I know that. If certain parties had discovered she was with those freighters, it would have caused no end of trouble, and things were bad enough as it was. She said you ran into problems using the hypernet gate at Midway, but after your fleet left, the problems cleared up. According to Bradamont, the Syndics—ah, excuse me, the people of the free and independent Midway Star System, were baffled but were certain that the Syndic government must have figured out how to selectively block access to hypernet gates, and they used that to complicate your journey home.”