The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

Desjani grimaced. “I want to feel like the senior partner when it comes to the Dancers. I’ve got this feeling that they consider themselves the senior partner, though. Older and wiser than us dumb humans.”

“I’ll ask Charban about that,” Geary said, realizing that the idea bothered him, too. It’s one thing to accept powers beyond human comprehension that know more than we do, but another thing entirely to accept another living creature as superior to us in any way. Has Charban picked up any signs of superior attitudes in the Dancers? Or would we even recognize superior attitudes in something so different from us?

But now was not the time for that discussion. His attention needed to remain focused on events outside of Dauntless. And Charban deserved a bit of a rest after the recent attempted-communication-with-aliens fiasco.

Dauntless didn’t feel any different when traveling at point zero zero three light speed. Space didn’t offer obvious signs of slower or faster movement, the sort of things you would experience on a planet, like air turbulence and noise or nearby objects whose own motion relative to yours would change as your speed did. The battle cruiser felt exactly the same as she did when moving at a velocity of point zero five, or point one, or point two light speed. Endless space outside of Dauntless’s hull looked the same. But on Geary’s display, the speed vector for the fleet had shrunk to a tiny stub, and that reduction in velocity had thrown off the calculations of those preparing this trap. The fragments of the exploded freighter would keep spreading, their density thinning with every cubic meter the sphere of wreckage expanded. By the time the Alliance warships actually reached the region of the explosion, there should be very little hindrance to their sensors.

“Nice,” Desjani approved.

“Thank you, Captain.”

“But don’t get complacent. There might be a trap within this trap.” She hit her comm controls. “Master Chief Gioninni, congratulations.”

“Excuse me, Captain?”

“You called it, Master Chief. Now I need to know what sort of fallback you might have created in case the mines failed.”

Gioninni sounded dubious. “A fallback to the fallback to the diversion?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Captain, I have no idea. There’s no room or time left for them to hit us with something else in this star system. Now, the next star system. I’d keep an eye out there. But you’d need someone with a lot better, um, strategizing mind than mine to come up with another trap here before we jump.”

Desjani smiled, though it was hard to tell whether that was because of Gioninni’s statement or because the fleet’s ships were beginning to spot mines and detonate them using hell-lance shots. “No one’s better than you at that particular type of strategizing, Master Chief. You just out-thought some Syndics.”

“Well, hell, Captain, that ain’t nothing. Syndics are as dumb as dirt. That’s why they’re Syndics.”

“Good point, Master Chief. Stay out of trouble.” Desjani ended the call and leaned back in her seat, grimacing even though the destruction of mines was happening with greater frequency as the fleet moved into the minefield at a velocity that in space terms qualified as plodding. “If I never see this star system again, it will still be too soon.”

“We’ll never have any reason to come back here,” Geary said.

“We never expected to have to come here in the first place,” she reminded him. “Hey, I just thought of something.”

“What?” Geary searched his mind frantically for any possible threat he might have missed, any option be should have considered, any—

“The jump pool,” she explained. “You slowed us down so much, it’ll throw the jump pool off completely.”

“Tanya . . .”

But even he felt his spirits growing lighter as the First Fleet finally jumped out of Sobek Star System.

—

FOUR days to Simur.

Four days to second-guess every step he had taken since leaving Varandal.

Four days to dwell on the losses the fleet had suffered as it went through enigma space, into the Kick star system, then fought the Kicks at Honor Star System, before returning to human space through Dancer territory and fighting the enigmas again at Midway. And now the losses at Sobek.

He had thought it was over. That no one else serving under his command would have to die, that no more ships would be lost. But the enigmas, the Kicks, then the Syndics again had proven him wrong.