He was still basking in the pleasure of having respectfully told Sissons where to stick his expectations when another message arrived, this one from the Adriana Star System government.
Most of the government seemed to have assembled to stand in the background as the elderly woman in the front spoke. Thanks to medical and genetic advances, age didn’t visibly appear in people anymore until they were getting near the ends of their lives, so Geary realized this woman must have been born in the first decades of the war, making her the closest thing to a contemporary he now had.
“Welcome, Admiral Geary,” she said with formal dignity. “The people of Adriana are honored beyond measure by your presence here and cannot express too strongly our gratitude for your assistance in dealing with our current troubles. We understand that you will be very busy with your labors, and will be contacting us regarding them, but if you have any time at all for social events we wanted you to know that the Adriana Academy for Children of the Armed Forces here contains a child who is descended from one of your crew on the Merlon. We know you would want to be aware of that. To the honor of our ancestors, President Astrida, out.”
Once again, he found himself staring at the empty place where a message had been playing out. They wanted him to physically visit their world, their city. Everyone wanted Black Jack to do that. With rare exceptions, he had been able to avoid doing so, begging off on the grounds of duty. He had seen firsthand on Kosatka how the citizens of the Alliance reacted to Black Jack, and the hero worship there, worship for someone he knew he was not, had unnerved him and strengthened his resolve to avoid similar situations.
However, a descendant of someone who had been on his heavy cruiser during the battle at Grendel? Just what was an Academy for Children of the Armed Forces? Some sort of college or university?
Geary looked up the term and read it twice before the meaning sank in. Orphanages established and funded by the Alliance government for those children who have lost both parents during military service in the war.
Both parents. And according to the ship’s database, there were enough children so afflicted that the Alliance had established dozens of those academies on worlds scattered throughout Alliance space. Captain Tulev . . . had he spent part of his childhood at such an academy after his home world was all but destroyed?
Geary himself had lost his entire living family to the war as well, though as an adult, when he literally slept through the rest of their lives while frozen in that escape pod. If he had been a child, it would have hurt so much more. He knew that. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to face those children. But . . .
Orphans. Why did it have to be orphans?
I’ll go see them. I’ll find the time. I owe them that.
• • •
“ADMIRAL, I have the information you asked for,” Duellos said.
Geary looked over at Duellos. He was trying to stop the simmering anger caused by the latest reply from General Sissons, which had simply punted the problem back to Geary rather than offering either forces or solutions. The anger was aimed as much at himself as at Sissons. I should have realized that Sissons could keep up this kind of thing indefinitely. I need a way to pressure him into supporting what it looks like will have to be my plan.
The battle cruisers Inspire, Formidable, Implacable, and the light cruisers with them, were only twenty-four light-minutes, or about four hours’ travel time at point one light speed, distant from the primary world at Adriana as they continued en route the planet. Geary, uncomfortable in the flag-officer quarters aboard Inspire, had come to the bridge to watch events and get a better feel for how Inspire ran. “Which information was that?”
“The true status of the military forces in this star system.” Duellos gestured a tall, trim male lieutenant forward. “Lieutenant Barber, please give the Admiral a rundown.”
“Yes, sir.” Barber called up a virtual window and began explaining it to Geary. “These are aerospace unit and base designations. Over here are ground forces unit and base designations. These lines represent all of the comm traffic to and from those units and bases that we’ve been able to identify. More traffic, thicker lines, less traffic, thinner lines. Much of the traffic on Adriana’s main planet would be by ground channels, such as buried cables, which we can’t spot from out here, but by monitoring message sequence numbers, we’re able to tell how many messages we’re not seeing.”
“That’s clear enough,” Geary said. “The aerospace units all seem to be pretty busy.”
“Yes, sir. We assess that the status reports we’re seeing from the aerospace forces are accurate and do represent the actual forces present in this star system.” Barber paused, his lips thinning as he looked to the ground forces side of the image. “But for the ground forces, some units don’t seem to be communicating with each other or with their headquarters except for those status reports saying all is well and they are at almost one hundred percent readiness.”
Geary shook his head. “You’re saying some ground forces units, but to me it looks like most of those units.”
“Yes, sir. Which is especially odd since elements of those units are supposed to be on duty at facilities off planet. There would have to be a lot of messages we could see. There’s nothing going to or from them, though, except daily status reports. One of my chiefs ran a pattern analysis on those status reports coming from units that had no other comm traffic. She found that when all reports are compared against each other, the number of minor problems reported each day, such as the number of personnel sick or percent of equipment temporarily degraded, closely matches the results produced by a simple random number generator.”
“They’re fake,” Geary said.
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Barber agreed. “My assessment is that those units do not actually exist.”
Geary looked toward Duellos. “Some of those units have been assigned to Adriana for a long time.”
“True enough,” Duellos said. “But that doesn’t mean they are still here.”
“The units were disestablished, but they were left in the comm systems?”
“In the entire command and control system,” Duellos corrected. “If you’re going to maintain the illusion of an army, you have to ensure the command and control system reflects that illusion.”
“My best estimate,” Lieutenant Barber said, “is that each of the two ground forces divisions still assigned here actually only have a single brigade of soldiers still active. The rest of the ground forces organization is just an empty shell that, as Captain Duellos says, produces the illusion of a much larger force than really exists.”
“Force reductions,” Geary said as he studied the image showing Barber’s analysis. “Done in such a way as to mask their impact. Ground forces divisions have three brigades these days? That means the ground forces in Adriana have been cut by two-thirds. The locals must know, though. You can’t hide all of those empty garrisons and camps. You can’t hide the lack of soldiers going out on liberty and spending money on the local economy.”
“The locals may know the truth,” Duellos said, “or they may be starting to guess the truth, but they may not wish to accept it. With what you told me about Yokai, it’s clear that the Alliance is going to extensive efforts to conceal how the force reductions have impacted its defenses near the border with the Syndicate Worlds.”
Lieutenant Barber pointed to some of the ground forces unit designations. “Sir, the locals may have been told that those missing soldiers were sent to Yokai. I saw a couple of reports that indicated the locals believe that the defenses at Yokai have been strengthened.”
“Maybe those defenses were strengthened,” Geary said, but he didn’t really believe it.
“Admiral,” Barber said with immense caution, “if, uh, if those missing units were at Yokai, there would not be any need to, uh, pretend they were still here.”
“You’re righ
t,” Geary said. “Lieutenant Barber, I don’t mind people telling me when they have good reason to believe I may be wrong. In fact, I appreciate it. Thank you.”
Barber smiled with obvious relief. “Yes, sir. It’s just that . . . other admirals . . .”
“I know, Lieutenant. I’ve dealt with my own share of admirals who don’t want to ever be told they might be wrong.” Geary peered at the study again. “Both divisional headquarters are reporting that they are fully intact. Is that right?”
“As far as we can tell, yes, sir. Headquarters units appear to be fully operational. There are indications, requests for more workspace equipment and things of that nature, that they have grown a bit.”
“They gutted the fighting units, and not only kept the headquarters at full strength but made the headquarters larger?”
“When money is short, you have to keep your priorities straight,” Duellos observed sarcastically. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Excellent work. The Admiral and I will now discuss Great and Important Matters.”
“Yes, sir.”
Barber retreated to the comm watch station, and Duellos activated the privacy field around his and Geary’s seats. “Colonel Galland told you that the locals raised a fuss to maintain her wing at full strength,” Duellos said. “That probably didn’t endear Colonel Galland to her superiors.”
“No. I’m sure it didn’t,” Geary said. “And she said that General Sissons likes to suck up to his bosses though she didn’t say it quite so bluntly.”
Duellos smiled. “If General Sissons wanted above all to keep his superiors happy, he would have gone along without protest with any reductions in force passed on to him, and not told the locals so they wouldn’t raise any fuss that might upset Sissons’s bosses. We now know why Sissons hasn’t offered you any ground forces,” Duellos said. “He doesn’t have any to spare. Those who are left are maintaining the image of two full divisions. Judging by how many refugee ships we’re dealing with, we would need a substantial fraction of at least one brigade of ground forces to get this job done, and if that many more troops left Adriana, the whole imaginary house of cards would collapse as it became painfully obvious just how few Alliance soldiers were left here.”
“If by a substantial fraction you mean two regiments, yes, that’s what we need. Without those ground forces, I can’t carry out my orders.” Not a lethal trap, but a nasty one.
If that was the trap. Geary frowned at his display, which showed every portion of Adriana Star System and everything in it, though now he knew he couldn’t trust some of that data. If I fail to get this refugee situation resolved, it will be embarrassing for me. Not horrible or dangerous or unbearable. What sort of trap is that?
What am I missing?
One of his hands moved, drawing out the focus on the display. Out . . . out . . . out. The details inside Adriana vanished as the scale shifted to interstellar distances, abruptly going from light-hour scale to light-year scale. Adriana, Yokai, and on out some more until Batara came into view as well.
The answer hit in a rush. What was happening in Adriana was important, but there were also Yokai and Batara. And maybe some other Syndic star systems were involved, as well as possibly the remnants of the Syndicate Worlds government or a local warlord CEO. The source of the problem, and any solution, lay in other star systems.
So would any traps.
NINE
SOMETIMES everything came together just right, like pieces of an intricate and finely machined puzzle in which every complex piece slid into place to form a perfect picture. Operations could be like that, where the mythical Murphy and his Law were nowhere to be seen, where friction appeared to be nonexistent, where even the enemy’s moves contributed to exactly the desired outcome.
This wasn’t one of those times.
“Rioting on some of the refugee ships in orbit! They’re storming the supply shuttles!”
“The FAC squadron providing orbital security has suffered from a wing-wide control-system software failure! Individual FACs are operating their systems on manual and cannot conduct security ops!”
“The refugee freighter being escorted to the primary world by Dagger and Parrot is suffering life-support failure! The two destroyers don’t have capacity to hold anywhere near all of the refugees!”
“Link has been lost to light cruiser Forte. Assess likely comm system failure.”
“Two more refugee ships were just detected arriving at the jump point from Yokai! One is broadcasting a distress signal warning of equipment failures that could lead to power core collapse!”
“Formidable reports her main propulsion unit controls have failed during routine testing! She will be unable to maneuver until emergency repairs are completed!”
Geary, seated on the bridge of Inspire, waited as several seconds ticked by, knowing that everyone was watching him for instructions.
Captain Duellos, the palm of one hand pressed hard against his forehead, spoke in tight tones. “Is that all?”
His watch-standers looked at each other, then one lieutenant nodded. “Yes, sir. For the moment, sir.”
Geary started issuing commands, letting them flow from somewhere inside without pausing to double-check or sanity-check them. That could come after he had put things into motion. He touched the comm controls. “Implacable, this is Admiral Geary. Proceed immediately at best speed to intercept the refugee freighter being escorted by Dagger and Parrot. Take aboard enough refugees to stabilize life support on the freighter and carry out whatever repairs you can. Geary, out.
“Dagger, Parrot, I have ordered Implacable to proceed to your assistance. Do what you can until the battle cruiser gets there. Geary, out.
“Captain Duellos, take all light cruisers and Inspire at best speed to assume security duties around the orbiting refugee ships. Take Inspire right into the middle of them and have the light cruisers form a perimeter. Pass orders to Forte via coded flashing light to accompany the rest of her squadron if she can do so. Alert the Marine platoon aboard Inspire to prepare for antiriot operations. Only nonlethal measures authorized.”
His hand once again tapped the comm controls on the seat. “Colonel Galland, this is Admiral Geary. I am sending forces to assist your aerospace units in security ops. Keep me informed of your status. Geary, out.”
Another tap. “General Sissons, this is Admiral Geary. There is rioting on the refugee ships orbiting the main planet. I have ships en route but require ground forces assistance to reestablish control. I expect military police in antiriot configuration to be shuttled up to assist my forces upon our arrival. If the military police do not arrive, I will immediately begin shuttling down every refugee on the orbiting ships and dropping them off at your headquarters landing field so your forces can deal with them there. That is a promise, General. Geary, out.”
A third tap. “Unknown freighter coming from Yokai and broadcasting distress signal. None of my ships can reach you within the next twelve hours. You are ordered to divert immediately to the second gas giant in this star system, the one designated Adriana Sextus on navigational beacons. The orbiting facilities there will provide any necessary repair assistance, after which you will be required to proceed inward to the main inhabited world and place yourself under our control. Admiral Geary, out.”
A fourth. “Commanders of Ninth, Fourteenth, and Twenty-first Destroyer Squadrons, be prepared to divert some of the destroyers escorting refugee ships in order to reinforce Inspire and the light cruisers. Have the maneuvers preplanned and ready to go if I call for help from you. Geary, out.”
He sat back, taking a deep breath. “Did I miss anything?”
Inspire was already slewing about slightly, her main propulsion units kicking in to hurl the battle cruiser toward the refugee ships parked in near orbit about the planet the Alliance warships had been approaching at a more sedate velocity. Duellos waited until his ship had steadied out before
replying. “I don’t believe so. The locals at the second gas giant are obligated to provide emergency assistance, but you might tip off the local government just as a courtesy.”
“I’ll do that.” Geary paused as another message flashed for his attention.
General Sissons’s chief of staff was trying to look outraged but not succeeding very well. “For the commander of Alliance fleet forces in Adriana Star System, from General Sissons, commander of Alliance ground forces. We have no assets available to assist you. No landings at Alliance ground forces facilities on this planet are authorized. Ground forces, out.”
“If he were a Syndic, we could just drop a rock on him,” Duellos commented. “Ten minutes to joining up with the refugee formation, Admiral,” he added.
“Thank you, Captain.” Geary tapped the reply command. “For General Sissons, personal from Admiral Geary. Since you are unable to transport forces to assist in orbit, I will bring the refugees to you. Unless you are willing to fire upon my shuttles as they drop off refugees, you had better either find the necessary assets and get them into orbit immediately or stand by to receive those refugees on the ground, because they will be coming. Geary, out.”
“Implacable reports she is one hour from intercepting the freighter with failing life support,” Inspire’s operations watch-stander reported. “Dagger and Parrot are standing by the freighter, but one attempt to attach an evac tube to one of the freighter’s air locks had to be abandoned when the freighter crew lost control of security at the air lock.”
“Understood,” Geary said. In his mind’s eye it was all too easy to visualize what was happening on the freighter. The air increasingly unbreathable, the refugees panicking, the crew probably withdrawing onto the bridge and the engineering compartments and sealing the hatches for their own protection. He could see Implacable’s vector, see how the battle cruiser was accelerating all out for the intercept, but soon the warship would have to pivot and begin braking, using those same mighty propulsion units to slow her again so that she could match velocity with the lumbering freighter.