much larger and draw on tremendous power supplies. Even a single hit from one of them could slash through shields and rip into a ship.
Even as Geary spoke, Dauntless’s sensors reported another volley fired. He itched to order counteractions, having to remind himself that this had all happened minutes ago and Duellos had surely already done something. “That should be enough to determine the location of the cannon on the surface of the planet,” Desjani noted.
Sure enough, a half-dozen kinetic bombardment rounds shot from Duellos’s battle cruisers, arcing down into the atmosphere as the Alliance ships continued making random changes in position and track, and the Syndics fired yet a third volley, this one managing a single near miss on Gauntlet. “It’s a good thing those cannon take a while to recharge,” Geary commented.
“They’ll probably only get one more volley off,” Desjani agreed. She was right; the shots all going wide this time.
One of the Marine recce drones had been swung over to observe the position where the cannon were located, providing a long-range view of the spot near the horizon of the drone’s viewing area. The kinetic rounds launched by Duellos’s battle cruisers flashed down, leaving tracks of intense brightness in their wakes, the impacts creating huge bursts of light and throwing out fountains of debris. As the light faded, mushroom clouds rose above the site, merging into one titanic grave marker for the cannon battery.
Geary sighed. “Let’s hope that was all they had.”
“Unlikely,” Desjani advised.
“I know.” Geary tapped his communications controls again. “Captain Duellos, congratulations to you and your ships. Well done. Keep an eye out for further attempts.” He grimaced at the images from the recce drones. I can understand why it’s tempting to just bomb the hell out of a planet to minimize the chance of anything surviving to threaten us. But what would give me the right to kill millions of civilians in the hopes of hitting some concealed defenses? It wouldn’t even ensure eliminating those defenses if they were hardened and concealed, and they’re probably both. He looked at Desjani. “Do you think we’ll have to deal with that at the third planet?”
“Possibly. We have to assume the threat exists.”
Geary leaned back, shaking his head. “Why can’t they be rational about this? They don’t have much chance of hurting us, and they’re inviting retaliation every time they shoot.”
Desjani gave a questioning glance his way. “Sir, we’ve been fighting a war with them for a century. I think things like ‘rational’ went out the window quite a while back.”
“Good point. Do you think it would do any good to broadcast another demand not to attack our ships?”
She shrugged. “That’s hard to say. The energy pulse from the collapsing hypernet gate must have fried every unshielded receiver in this star system, but some might still be operational to hear you.”
“Unfortunately, those probably belong to the government and the military.”
“Yes, sir. And they’re unlikely to listen to reason.”
Geary nodded, then studied Desjani. “Captain, when I first met you I think you wouldn’t have hesitated to wipe all of these planets clean of human life. You don’t seem interested in doing that now.”
She looked straight ahead for a while before answering. “I’ve listened to you, sir, and I’ve had some long talks with my ancestors. There’s no honor in killing the helpless. Besides, what we’ve done here will require a massive investment from the Syndics to repair, whereas if we wiped out the system, the Syndics would just write it off.” Desjani paused. “And no one can accuse us of behaving like the Syndics here. We’re not them. I realized I don’t want to die doing things the Syndics would do.”
“Thank you, Captain Desjani.” Between honor and practical considerations, Desjani had decided Geary was right. It made him feel much better than having her agree with him just because he was Black Jack. Geary had wondered what would happen if he dropped dead tomorrow, if the fleet would return to the tactics and practices he had seen when he arrived. But it seemed at least some of the officers were returning to even older practices, the ones Geary was familiar with. He wasn’t fool enough to believe that everything from the past was better than now, but surely abiding by the laws of war, the dictates of true honor, and fighting wisely instead of just bravely were good things.
Over the next several hours as Geary’s formation headed for the third planet, Captain Duellos had to bombard the fourth planet three more times. None of the Syndic attempts to hit his ships had succeeded, which wasn’t surprising, given the fact that the surface-based weapons couldn’t directly observe their targets and had to depend on data provided by drones popping up briefly to take snapshots of the Alliance ships. On the other hand, two of the Marine recce drones ceased transmitting, indicating they had been shot down. Colonel Carabali wouldn’t be pleased about that, but Geary thought two drones was a small price to pay for avoiding hits on his ships.
As Formation Delta closed on the third world, shuttles launched, carrying Marines to their objectives. Most of the shuttles and Marines headed for a big orbiting complex with a large population. The rest aimed for orbiting warehouses containing raw materials and supplies that would have been taken down to the surface or sent onward to other places in the system to outfit Syndic warships under construction. Now they would be taken to the Alliance fleet to take care of its crews and go into manufacturing the supplies it needed.
Geary kept a wary eye on the third world as his ships closed on the planet. The third world hadn’t been quite so densely covered with Syndic defense and defense-related targets, so fewer targets had been hit there, so the upper atmosphere wasn’t as heavily clouded with the dust and water vapor debris from those impacts. It still wasn’t very easy to see the surface, though. A bit warm by human standards, the world was still nice enough to be tolerable. Or at least, it had been. For the next several months it would be a bit more uncomfortable thanks to all of that dust in the atmosphere. But compared to the damage the Alliance could have done, rendering the world completely uninhabitable and smashing every city, the inhabitants of the third world really didn’t have strong grounds for complaint.
The sensors of Dauntless and the other ships in the formation were scanning every piece of surface visible beneath the dust tossed up by the Alliance bombardment, but no defenses missed by that bombing had been detected. “All units in Formation Delta are to avoid entering low orbit around the third world and are to initiate random course and speed changes while within range of weapons based on the planet.”
The order was still being acknowledged when very powerful particle beams tore up through the atmosphere of the third world, aiming for Daring. Fortunately, the Syndics had been overeager, firing at extreme range, and as a result their shots narrowly missed the Alliance battle cruiser. Geary punched his controls savagely. “Daring, take out those guns.”
“It’ll be a pleasure, sir,” Daring responded. A second volley from the Syndic planetary battery ripped through the space Daring would have occupied if she hadn’t jogged slightly to one side and up. The second attack gave Daring the targeting data she needed. The battle cruiser began spitting out kinetic projectiles, the solid metal rounds racing downward through the atmosphere. This time Geary could see the flashes of light on the planet’s surface when the kinetic bombardment tore apart the particle beam battery as well as a fair amount of real estate around it.
By now all of the Alliance ships were jinking erratically, changing courses and speeds by the tiny amounts, which were all that was needed to throw off shots aimed from the planet’s surface at targets in high orbit. Geary tried to relax, knowing they would be worried about more such attacks the entire time they were near this world. “I hope that’s all we have to deal with,” he remarked to Desjani.
On the heels of his words a small window appeared before him, showing the worried face of Colonel Carabali. “Our troops on the orbiting city are under fire,” Carabali reported.
Serves me right for saying something that stupid. I was just asking for trouble. “The orbiting city.” Geary called up the information. With a population of around fifty thousand, the big orbiting complex did qualify as a city by the standards of space installations. It also had a gratifyingly large amount of food stockpiled or otherwise available to feed those fifty thousand and to provision Syndic warships stopping in for supplies. The Alliance fleet could use that food, though Geary had insisted enough be left to avoid starvation. “What exactly is going on?”
“We’ve secured most of the food warehouses and the areas adjacent to them. But Syndic special forces are firing on us from outside our perimeter, using the civilian population for cover. They’re popping out, firing, then fading into the populace.”
It stood to reason that there would be lots of Syndic military forces among the population here, not merely to defend the system but also to provide internal security, a nice way of saying they kept the local population in line. At least some of those military forces weren’t adverse to doing things that could cause the deaths of the civilians they were supposed to be protecting. But he was thinking in Alliance terms. Those troops weren’t really there to
