Valiant

He slumped backward as Desjani rapped out orders and Dauntless swung onto the new course, her propulsion units kicking in hard enough once again to make the inertial dampers whine in protest. “Captain Desjani,” Geary asked, “can this ship survive a nova-scale burst of energy at this distance from the source?” He was pretty sure he already knew the answer and pretty sure it wasn’t a happy one, but he wanted to be certain.

“I seriously doubt it.” Desjani frowned, then glanced around the bridge, focusing on one watch-stander. “Assessment? ” she demanded.

The watch-stander tapped a data pad frantically, then shook his head. “No, ma’am. As the burst expands away from the source, its single-point intensity is going to be dropping rapidly, but not nearly fast enough. A battle cruiser’s shields and armor, even at full strength, couldn’t withstand it even with maximum preparations. Destroyers, cruisers, they’d be totally overwhelmed. Battleships might have a chance at this distance. Not a big one, but some might make it through, though they’d be completely crippled.” He paused and tapped a couple of more times. “The battleships’ crews would all be killed by the radiation, though, after it collapsed their shields, so I guess it wouldn’t matter.”

Desjani blew out a long breath, then looked to Geary. “We’d better hope it’s not nova-scale.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” he agreed.

Desjani seemed to hesitate, then turned back to the same watch-stander. “What about the inhabited world in this star system?”

Geary stared at her. In his concern for the fleet, he hadn’t yet considered what would happen to that world. Yet Desjani had, or at least had realized that he would care.

The watch-stander rubbed his brow with one hand and tapped his data pad again. “There’s a lot of uncertainties. If the energy wave is nova-scale or anywhere near that, the planet will be turned into a cinder. If it’s something a great deal lower than that, the side facing the hypernet gate’s former location when the shock wave hits will be fried, but the sheltered side might be able to ride it out though they’ll face horrific storms. Whether the planet will be habitable after that is hard to say.”

“What about the star itself?” Geary asked. “What’ll be the effect on Lakota?”

“That’s impossible to determine without knowing how much energy will hit it, sir.” The watch-stander shook his head. “If it’s nova-scale, the star will be really messed up, but then no one will be left around here to care. Anything less than that, it’s just too hard to estimate. Stars have incredibly complex internal reactions going on constantly. They’re remarkably self-regulating, but even the most stable star has some variability in output. If I had to guess, I’d say that if this energy burst we’re expecting is at all significant, it will cause enough problems inside the star Lakota’s photosphere to make it experience more variability at shorter intervals.”

“So even if the habitable world remains able to support life, the star Lakota may render it uninhabitable in the near future.”

“Yes, sir. I can’t say that will happen, but I’d regard it as a probable outcome.”

Desjani frowned and checked her display. “That world is almost five light-hours from the hypernet gate and two and a quarter light-hours from this fleet. If we sent a warning message, they would get it in time to at least order people into shelter, though that’s unlikely to matter to those on the side of the planet that gets hit.”

The woman warrior who had once expressed regret that null-field weapons couldn’t be used against enemy planets was now willing to warn enemy civilians. “Thank you for thinking of that,” Geary told her.

“We need survivors, sir. People who can tell other Syndics that the Alliance fleet didn’t do this.”

Desjani was just being pragmatic, then. Or justifying her actions on pragmatic grounds. He wondered which it was. Geary’s eyes strayed back to the display of Lakota Star System. He looked at the data for the main inhabited world, at the representations of colonies on other worlds or moons, at the orbital facilities and the civilian space traffic that hadn’t yet reached a place where the crews could take refuge if the Alliance fleet sent warships after them. And at the clusters of small symbols that marked escape pods from Syndic warships and repair ships fleeing for safety. Hundreds, probably thousands of Syndic personnel in those escape pods, but Geary didn’t want an estimate of their numbers. They wouldn’t stand a chance if the energy discharge from the collapsing gate had any power at all, and there was nothing he could do about it. “I need a broadcast to the entire star system.”