The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

“They’re broadcasting merchant identity codes,” Lieutenant Castries reported. “Not Syndic military and government codes. All twenty-three courier ships are claiming to be private shipping.”

“This stinks,” Desjani growled. “We’ve never encountered a Syndic courier model that wasn’t government or military. What are they doing here?”

Geary already had Lieutenant Iger on the line. “Can you confirm that, Lieutenant? These courier ships should actually be military or otherwise under the control of the Syndic government?”

“Yes, sir,” Iger replied after a two-second pause that felt far longer. “Proving that might be difficult. Very difficult. But all of our experience is that courier ships have always been reserved by the Syndics for official use only. The fact that these are pretending to be something else is highly suspicious.”

“What threat can those courier ships pose to us?”

“I don’t know, Admiral. Fleet sensors aren’t spotting any indications of weapons add-ons.”

“They’re not here for a party,” Desjani said.

He stared at his display, feeling the same sense of threat and wrongness that Tanya obviously was. His fleet had automatically slewed about after exiting the gate, carrying out the preplanned maneuver to avoid a possible minefield. But there were no mines, just that very odd grouping of courier ships. “All units in First Fleet, come starboard three zero degrees, up four five degrees at time two four. Maintain all systems at full readiness.”

The ships of the fleet were coming around to face the courier ships when the supposed merchant craft pivoted and began accelerating to meet the Alliance ships. “They’re approaching at maximum acceleration,” Lieutenant Castries said as alarms pulsed from the fleet’s combat systems. “Projected tracks are for an intercept with the center of our formation.”

Desjani took in a deep breath, then spoke calmly. “They’re coming straight at us at max acceleration, and they have no weapons.”

“Reconnaissance?” Geary asked, knowing that wasn’t the real answer.

“You know better than that. Those things accelerate like bats out of hell. By the time they reach us, they’ll have achieved a closing speed of at least point two light and probably faster. They’d want to be able to see details if they were on a recce mission, and at those kinds of velocities details tend to smear. No. There’s only one possible reason why those ships would be coming directly at us that way.”

He knew what she meant. “The Syndics haven’t done that before,” Geary said. “They haven’t sent ships on deliberate suicide runs.”

“The Syndic warships at Lakota were ordered to destroy the hypernet gate there—”

“Those warships didn’t know that was a suicide mission!”

She pointed to her display. “How large a crew does a courier ship need for a one-way mission?”

He took a second to reply. “One.”

“Do you think the Syndics could find twenty maniacs willing to die for their CEOs?” Desjani asked. “Or some poor saps given a chance to wipe out their family’s debt or get a relative out of a death sentence at one of the Syndic labor camps? I don’t know. I do know the Syndics have often shown the willingness to sacrifice their ‘workers’ at the drop of a hat. It’s a suicide attack. That’s how the Syndics are balancing the odds since you beat the hell out of them using conventional tactics. Is there any other possible mission those ships coming at us could be carrying out?”

“No.” And at the rate they were coming, those ships would be plunging into his formation in about twenty minutes.

FIVE

ACCORDING to the terms of the peace treaty with the Syndicate Worlds, he couldn’t simply fire on unarmed ships broadcasting merchant identification. Geary didn’t bother saying that. Tanya knew it, and so did everybody else. Including the Syndic leaders who had ordered this operation. If those leaders had expected him to hesitate, to question what to do under these circumstances, they had made a mistake. “Those ships are operating in an aggressive and dangerous manner,” Geary announced for the benefit of the official record. “We have a right to act in self-defense. Broadcast a warning that any ship entering the weapons engagement zone for any of our ships will be fired upon. Repeat the broadcast eight times, on all standard safety and coordination circuits.”

As Desjani’s comm watch-stander scrambled to get that sent, Geary tapped his fleetwide comm control again. “All units in the First Fleet. The twenty-three courier ships accelerating toward an intercept with our formation have been warned to stay clear of us. If they continue on tracks toward us, they are to be regarded as hostile. Any of them that enter your weapons engagement envelopes are to be engaged with all weapons until disabled or destroyed.”