The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

Despite his certainty that the defensive arrangement of ships would frustrate the Syndic attackers, Geary still felt tense as the four groups of ships swung in against different parts of the outer shell of the Alliance formation. The Syndics bored in, entering the Alliance missile envelopes, and specters began leaping from the nearest Alliance warships.

But the Syndics pitched around and climbed or dove away almost as soon as they had entered missile range. Geary watched, angry, as dozens of missiles were wasted, their targets zooming out of range. “I should have guessed they’d do something like that.”

“They won’t get away with it again,” Desjani assured him. “I recommend you tell the ships to hold missile fire until the Syndics are too close to evade out of range.”

“Yeah. Good idea.” He transmitted the orders, glaring at his display. It wasn’t a stalemate. As long as the Alliance ships kept moving, they would reach the next jump point and leave Simur. But it felt like a stalemate as the Syndic warships bent their vectors back toward the Alliance formation again. “They may not be able to hurt us, but they’ve got the initiative. I don’t want to give them time to think up something.”

“Hmmm,” Desjani murmured. She hesitated as a thought struck her, then leaned toward her display, watching intently as she entered commands. “They’re using automated maneuvering. I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be sure?” Geary asked.

“The movements are extremely precise. Every ship moves at the exact same moment, and every maneuver is identical for every ship. Do a replay of their tracks when those four groups last came at us, then overlay the tracks of all four groups on each other.”

“Identical,” Geary said. “Not just each ship, the entire formation. The exact same approach vector and the same avoidance vector.”

“They’re new,” Desjani insisted. “Not just the ships. The crews. They don’t have the training to maneuver manually, so they’re letting their automated systems handle everything. Maybe they’ve got orders to do that. But if they’re using automated systems, then those systems will have patterns.”

“How long will it take us to analyze those patterns?”

She paused, then made an uncertain gesture. “A while. We’ll need examples of their attack patterns. I don’t know how many. Eventually, our combat systems will be able to predict their movements.”

“Eventually.” Hanging around Simur waiting an indefinite period while Syndic warships made repeated passes at his formation didn’t sound like a worthwhile strategy. His fleet wouldn’t be happy with remaining on the defensive while the Syndics nipped at the Alliance formation, but if the fleet kept heading home, that should counteract the unhappiness to a considerable extent. He still had to worry about getting the Dancers, and Invincible, safely back to Alliance territory. “Tanya, let’s aim for the jump point for Padronis. Circuitous path, just in case there are any more surprises in this star system.”

Desjani paused again, but whatever she planned to say was interrupted by a call to Geary from the intelligence compartment on Dauntless.

Lieutenant Iger looked almost apologetic. “Admiral, there’s a new POW camp here. A really big one, on the habitable planet, and there are Alliance military personnel there.”

TEN

HIS head beginning to throb in time to a familiar headache, Geary rubbed one hand hard against his forehead. “There wasn’t before.”

“Not the last time the Alliance attacked this star system, no, sir.” Images appeared next to Iger. “This is new. Recent construction on the habitable world.”

Geary studied the images, seeing large barracks and warehouses arranged in a pattern that had become familiar. The new camp was located far from any of the cities on the planet, in an especially desolate region of the generally desolate planet. That also matched Syndic practice, which placed their prison and labor camps either close to a city or in the middle of nowhere. “It looks like a Syndic POW camp,” he conceded.

“We’ve also intercepted Syndic communications that indicate the camp was recently constructed as a central location for housing Alliance prisoners of war brought from smaller camps in other star systems,” Iger continued.

“They’re supposed to be turning those prisoners over to the Alliance as part of the peace agreement,” Geary said. “Why build a new camp here?”

“Admiral . . . perhaps the Syndics don’t intend to honor that part of the peace agreement.”

If that was so, it would be part and parcel of Syndic behavior as far as every other portion of the peace agreement was concerned. “How many POWs are here?”

“As many as twenty thousand, Admiral.”

“Twenty thousand?” Finding room on his ships for that many liberated prisoners would be extremely difficult.

“That’s the top end, Admiral, what the camp was designed to hold. The Syndic comms we’ve intercepted since arriving at Simur indicate thousands of Alliance prisoners are there, but we don’t know how many.”