Black Jack Geary has returned.”
Geary nodded as well, keeping his own thoughts to himself. Yeah. Great. Knowing I’m probably something out of a nightmare to lots of people isn’t something I ever wanted.
But you use the weapons you’ve got.
SEVEN
ABOUT nine hours later, Geary made sure he was on Dauntless’s bridge to watch the Syndic merchant ships “come home.”
“They blew a couple of them to star dust using some really big missiles,” Desjani advised. “Too bad you missed it, but the recording of the events are in the tactical library if you want to catch a late showing.”
“What kind of missile would do that kind of damage?” Geary wondered.
“My weapons techs say they must’ve been planetary bombardment weapons. No chance of hitting a warship, but the merchants were coming in on fixed courses and couldn’t evade. Half the things still missed their targets, though.”
Planetary bombardment weapons? Why would the Syndics have needed those in a backwater system like Corvus? They must’ve been based on one or both of those orbiting facilities since there’s no big warships in the system, so the things were positioned here on purpose. Geary rubbed his chin as he pretended to study the positions of the fleet but actually tried to think through the puzzle. The only thing the Syndics could’ve done with those weapons is employ them against one of the planets in this system. But why would…oh. Wake up, Geary. You know how the Syndic authorities maintain control. By any means necessary. I guess holding planetary bombardment munitions in orbit was just one more way of making sure the local population didn’t get any ideas about not following orders.
I never liked the Syndic leadership. I’m starting to really dislike them. He stared at the image of the inhabited world. It wasn’t a perfect place for humans. Not enough water, for one thing. Atmosphere’s a little weak. But it’s a good enough planet to sustain a decent population. I’m glad I didn’t retaliate against those people. They’ve had enough to worry about from the threat posed by their own leaders. “Any developments on the escape pods we launched from the merchant ships?”
“They’re coming in behind the merchants now.” Desjani looked as she’d tasted something foul. “The Syndic orbital defenses have taken out a few.”
“Damn.”
“It’s a safe bet that they assumed we’d lied about not turning them into weapons somehow, and they’d rather kill some of their own than risk us tricking them. You know what they’re like.”
“Yes, I do.” Geary shook his head. “But I had to try.”
Desjani shrugged. “For what it’s worth, the fact that the Syndic defenses have been forced to concentrate on the merchant ships means that it’s reasonable to expect that maybe half the escape pods will reach the surface intact.”
“Thanks. Once they get down, the Syndic population of that planet is going to find out we told the truth.”
“I suppose that might make them feel bad about killing the Syndics in the other pods,” Desjani stated doubtfully.
“I suppose it will.” Geary hunched forward to study the images projected in front of his seat. “Not long until impact.”
“No.” Now Desjani sounded gleeful. “Orbital installations are always sitting ducks.”
Despite his unhappiness at hearing the fate of some of the Syndic “merchant crews,” Geary almost smiled himself at the truth in her statement. The military kept proving that objects in fixed orbits were not just sitting ducks but dead ducks when faced with mobile opponents, and the civil leaderships kept building orbital fortresses anyway. “They make the populations of the planets they’re orbiting feel more secure. At least, that’s what they told us the last time I was in Alliance space. I don’t know if the rationale has changed since then.”
“It hasn’t. They still haven’t learned. Maybe we should send them video of this,” Desjani suggested with another grin.
Geary focused back on the visual display, where a highly magnified view of the area near the inhabited world was pocked with tags indicating the identities of various objects. Despite the best efforts of the Syndic defenders, several merchant ships were still rushing toward collisions with each of the military orbital installations. He’d worried a bit about hitting the planet by mistake, but the merchants had come up from the plane of the system to reach the Alliance fleet and had been sent back down. From that angle, the merchant ships were actually splitting to hit targets on either side of the planet. None were coming in at a high angle relative to the planet, so any that wandered into atmosphere ought to bounce off.
He glanced at the time and the distance, reminding himself that he was watching events that had played out about an hour and a half ago. The images seemed so immediate it was hard to recall that light from the events had been on its way out here for that long.
“Ten minutes to sighting of first impact,” the weapons watch called out.
Small flashes of light were blinking into and out of existence near the bright dots that were all Geary could see of the merchant ships. He picked one orbital installation to focus on and increased the magnification of his view until the merchant nearest its target was visible as a ship rather than a point of light. A moment later, the ship started getting bigger, causing Geary to check his controls to make sure he wasn’t still zooming in.
But he wasn’t. “Lead merchant aiming for Syndic Orbital Installation Alpha has been destroyed,” the weapons watch announced. The ship was getting bigger because its hull had been broken, and everything that had once made up the ship and its cargo was now spilling out into space, momentum still carrying the wreckage toward the target even though the engines had been silenced.
Something like hell-lances was being fired from the Syndic base, flaying the wreckage but unable to divert enough of it, and while the Syndic fire concentrated on the wreck of the lead merchant, the next in line, its engines still pushing it ever faster, came even with the debris of the first. Geary felt his jaws tighten as the Syndic close-in defenses shifted their fire to the still-intact merchant, though to what purpose he couldn’t imagine. The installation was obviously doomed. He hoped the defenses were on automatic and no personnel had been left to die in a futile attempt to save the orbital facility.
Minutes later, the second merchant slammed into one side of the Syndic installation, shattering a large section into fragments of junk. The remains of the ship itself, also reduced to junk by the collision, bounced off and kept going.
On its heels, the huge cloud of wreckage from the former lead merchant started impacting. Geary stared, fascinated despite himself, as the Syndic orbital base staggered under repeated impacts, its whole structure warping and breaking as hundreds of tons of materiel rammed into it at very high speed. It looked oddly as if the Syndic base was dissolving under the impacts as the wave of debris tore it apart. The view shifted as the optics on the Dauntless followed the installation’s movement. Under the force of the blows from the wreckage, the remains of the Syndic base were being shoved out of orbit, reeling farther and farther away from the planet it had both protected and menaced for who knew how long. The image became blurry as debris spread out from the impacts, hindering the Alliance fleet’s view of the devastation.
Geary decreased the magnification so he could see a larger area, watching as the remaining merchant ships shot past where their target had been. As expected, the angle between the ships’ courses and the planet meant none of the merchants plowed into the planet itself. One of the merchants hit the upper atmosphere of the planet at a high angle and glanced off, the friction and impact breaking its hull and spilling its cargo as the wreckage flew off into space. Three others drilled into the upper regions of the atmosphere at high speed, boring incandescent holes through the planet’s sky as the ships’ hulls vaporized into
