Geary let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding as the shuttles pulled away from the merchants. He checked the time, willing the shuttles to move faster, wanting them as far as possible from the merchants and their damage radii before the automated instructions that had been sent to the Marines to download finally kicked in.
“Thirty seconds,” Desjani advised unnecessarily.
Geary just nodded, his eyes flicking from the Marine shuttles to the damage radii around the merchant ships to the Alliance fleet auxiliaries that were drawing ever closer to their rendezvous with the merchants.
“Mark.”
Geary held his breath again, waiting to see if the instructions given the merchant ships’ automated systems to seal the escape pods would trigger the ships’ destruction. The Marine shuttles should be far enough away now to be safe, if their estimates were right. But “estimate” means it can be wrong.
“Pods should be launching,” Desjani announced.
“There.” Geary pointed at his display, where the Dauntless’s systems were tracking the escape pods that had shot out from the merchants. They had another moment to wonder if launching the pods would cause the ships’ power cores to overload. But once again, the merchants continued on, heading for the Alliance fleet in a steady way that was almost unnerving. “Let’s see what happens when we play with the merchants’ courses.”
Moments later, the instructions the Marines had downloaded ordered the merchants’ maneuvering systems to start kicking them down and around. The big, slow merchant ships, heavily laden with the stores the Alliance fleet had demanded, swung ponderously until their bows were pointed down and away from the Alliance fleet. “One more event left,” Desjani noted.
The main drives on the Syndic ships lit off, pushing against the mass and momentum of the merchant ships to change their path through space. Geary tried to judge their progress as the merchants continued getting closer to some of the Alliance ships. “Should we maneuver Titan and Jinn to make sure those things don’t get too close?”
Desjani pursed her lips as she studied the relative movement of the vessels, then shook her head. “We should start seeing distances opening any minute now. Unless something causes those main drives to shut off, those merchants won’t be a threat much longer.”
The drives didn’t shut off, continuing to push with all their capability against their ships. Slowly, the projected courses for the clumsy merchant ships began altering, the changes becoming clear as the actual courses diverged from the original paths, then changing faster as the big ships picked up speed in the new direction as fast as they were able.
“Where are they going?” Colonel Carabali’s image asked.
Geary gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Home.”
Carabali frowned.
“No, Colonel,” Geary assured her, “we’re giving the Syndics back their ships, but they won’t appreciate the gesture. We had to do something with those twenty ships, and the people who launched the attack on us needed to get paid back. There are two military facilities orbiting the inhabited world. The orders we had your Marines download into the merchant maneuvering systems direct ten of those merchant ships to keep accelerating as fast as they’re able, aimed directly at the point where one of those facilities will be when the merchants get there. The other ten are aimed at the other facility.”
The Colonel’s frown changed into an open smile. “Ten merchant ships packed full of cargo charging all-out at one target in a fixed orbit? The Syndics might have a little trouble stopping them all.”
“They won’t be able to stop them all, Colonel,” Geary assured her. He gestured toward the images of the lumbering merchants. “Under normal conditions, the merchants would be too slow to worry about and easily destroyed on approach. But these ships won’t be slowing down as they approach orbit. They’ll keep speeding up as best they can until impact.”
“And,” Desjani added with her own smile, “any hits on the merchants will have a lot of mass to divert. If they manage to blow the merchants apart, they’ll have to deal with all the cargo and wreckage still heading their way.”
Geary smiled, too. “After all, we do need to conserve our supply of long-range weaponry. If in the process of breaking their word, the Syndics hand us something that will do the job of punishing them, they’ll just have to live with the consequences.” He glanced at the display. “We’re just over thirty-two light- minutes from the inhabited world. It’ll take a half hour for them to see that their suicide attack didn’t come off as planned. Give them at least another ten minutes to track the merchants and figure out where they’re headed. I’ll wait a half hour to avoid tipping them off and then broadcast a message.”
“Which will reach them in about an hour. That’s far sooner than the merchant ships can reach their targets. They’ll have time to evacuate their orbital facilities,” Desjani sighed.
“Can’t be helped,” Geary noted with a shrug. “They’ll have no trouble seeing the merchants coming long before they get there. Besides, any CEOs on those facilities would’ve gotten off first anyway. Not that I think they’ll get off free. They’ll have to explain to their superiors how they lost every Syndic space military asset in this system, and why they caused the destruction of the majority of the large merchant ships in the system as well, all without inflicting any losses on us or impeding our progress.”
Carabali’s smile grew grim. “Perhaps they’ll be trading their boardrooms for labor camps.”
“Maybe,” Geary agreed. “And wouldn’t that be a damn shame.”
At the half-hour mark, Geary sat straight in his chair, making sure his uniform looked good, but not too good. He didn’t want to look like one of the finely tailored bureaucrats who ran things in the Syndicate Worlds. “Begin transmission. People of Corvus Star System,” he stated in his best command voice, pitched a little lower and louder than his usual speech, “this is Captain John Geary, commander of the Alliance fleet.” He paused a moment, letting the fact of his identity sink in. He suspected that since the Alliance believed Black Jack Geary to be a savior, the Syndics would see him as a boogeyman or at least a threat with an air of the supernatural about him. It made him uncomfortable, but he wasn’t about to discard something that could possibly help the fleet’s chances of getting home.
“I wish to inform you of two things. The first is that the merchant ships we arranged to meet us here turned out to be booby-trapped. We negotiated with your leaders in good faith. They broke their word, and as a result those ships are forfeit. Even now, they are being returned with a vengeance to those who sent them. I want it clearly understood that even though we were betrayed by your leaders, we do not seek retribution against you.”
“The other thing I must tell you is that the crews of the merchant ships were placed unharmed within the escape pods of the ships and ejected en route to your world. We did not sabotage or booby-trap those pods in any way. We did not turn them into weapons. They contain only your crew members.”
“We could’ve killed the crews of those ships, who by planning a sneak attack while disguised as civilians placed themselves outside the protections granted by the laws of war. We could’ve retaliated against your world. This fleet had it within its power to wipe all traces of life from this system. We did not do any of those things. The Alliance fleet showed more concern for the lives of the citizens of Corvus System than did your own leaders. Remember that.”
“To the honor of our ancestors,” Geary recited, using the old formula even as he wondered if a phrase already old-fashioned in his day had become totally outdated by now. “This is Captain John Geary, commanding officer of the Alliance fleet. End transmission.”
He relaxed, noticing as he did so that Captain Desjani had a small smile on her lips. “That should give the Syndics something to think about until the merchant ships start slamming into their targets. Especially the fact that you used the old, formal ending for your message.”
“It isn’t used anymore, then?”
“I’ve never seen it outside of historical documents.” Desjani nodded, her smile not varying. “Yes. It’s the sort of small touch that’ll scare the hell out of the Syndics, because it’ll make it clear that
