Until that gate collapsed and released a pulse of energy equal to a significant fraction of a typical nova. Despite the anguished account of a Syndic eyewitness Geary had spoken to, the pulse hadn’t actually destroyed everything. It would have been easier to handle the result if it had. Instead, it left behind plenty of traces of what had once been there.
“Every planet appears lifeless,” the operations watch-stander reported in a hushed voice. “There’s tattered wreckage on the fringes of the areas that faced the pulse when it hit. Even the places shielded by being on the other sides of their planets from where the pulse hit have been torn up, probably by earthquakes and other shock effects. There’s only a very thin atmosphere left on the main habitable world. Apparently that’s the only reason why everything on the planet stopped burning.”
Geary had his display fixed on a magnified image of what had been a city on that planet. A few stunted ruins poking up amid the fields of debris, the landscape reduced to rock and rubble, the whole scene having the unnatural clarity of something viewed without much intervening atmosphere. “Can we tell how many ships were here?”
“No, sir. The fleet’s sensors have picked up debris floating in orbit, but it’s all mangled and dispersed. That Syndic heavy-cruiser officer reported they were the only larger warship present. Based on the damage to that cruiser, any light cruisers or HuKs wouldn’t have survived. Ships without armor and military-grade shields wouldn’t have stood any chance at all here.”
Desjani pointed to the image of Kalixa. “What shape is the star in?”
“Highly unstable, but with so much solar mass blown away, it didn’t go nova itself. Nothing is going to be able to live in this star system for a long time, Captain.”
She looked at Geary, her face hard. “One hundred million. Those bastards killed one hundred million people here in a single stroke. I don’t care that they were Syndics. This can’t happen again.”
Had the aliens known what was at Kalixa? Had they cared? “At least they can’t do it again in any star system that installed the safe-fail systems.”
“Until they find another way to do it.” Desjani, aware that the watch-standers on Dauntless’s bridge were watching curiously, trying to figure out her meaning, leaned closer to the privacy field around Geary. “The aliens can’t be permitted to think they can get away with something like this. Lakota was bad enough, but at least other humans pulled the trigger there. The aliens did this.”
“Agreed. We have to stop it.” He took a long, deep breath, knowing that the images of this star system would stay with him forever. “Madam Co-President, please ensure that Senators Costa and Sakai get a good, long look at this star system. I want them to be absolutely clear on what war using hypernet gates as weapons would have involved.”
“Yes, Admiral Geary,” Rione agreed in an unusually subdued voice.
“Captain Desjani, let’s set a course for the jump point for Indras. I don’t want to spend a second longer here than we have to.”
“I’d rather be around a black hole,” Desjani agreed.
Aside from serving as an object lesson of what humanity had narrowly avoided having happen in countless other star systems, Kalixa also dampened any excessively high spirits in the fleet, reminding everyone of the risks still to be faced and the potential stakes if they failed. Watching the reactions of Dauntless’s crew, Geary wondered how they would respond if they learned that Kalixa had not been an accident or a Syndic mistake, but a deliberate act. As revolted as he was by the loss of life and destruction in Kalixa, he also wondered if his biggest challenge might involve fending off the aliens without triggering a vengeful war by humanity. His gut reaction, that the aliens had to pay for this, would be a common one. But a price that produced more human star systems devastated like this would only pitch humanity into another endless cycle of retaliation and revenge. And until they learned more about how powerful the aliens were, whether or not, as Desjani speculated, they might have other star-system-killing weapons to employ, an attempt at retaliation could easily risk many more star systems annihilated like Kalixa had been and uncounted billions more dead. As badly as I’d like someone, or something, to pay for this, all we can really do right now is what we can to keep it from happening again and find out more about the ones who did it.
Maybe there’s something else our resident Syndic can contribute to learning more.
He had the Syndic CEO Boyens brought from the brig to the interrogation room again. “We know the Syndic reserve flotilla attacked Varandal in response to the gate collapse at Kalixa,” Geary said. “You must have known the Alliance didn’t do that.”
“No,” Boyens denied, “we didn’t. Who else could have done it?”
“You’d been facing the aliens all those years.”
The CEO gazed back at Geary for a while as if trying to link the statement to the collapse of Kalixa’s gate. “They’ve never penetrated that deeply into Syndicate Worlds’ space. In any case, we reviewed the recording of the collapse that Cruiser C-875 brought to Heradao. There wasn’t any trace of alien attack on the gate. They couldn’t have done it. But we knew you’d already collapsed at least one hypernet gate in a Syndicate Worlds’ star system.”
“Are you talking about Sancere?” Geary demanded. “Where we had to prevent a gate collapse started by Syndic warships from producing the sort of devastation that happened here at Kalixa? Or do you mean Lakota, where Syndic warships took down the hypernet gate completely while this fleet was light-hours distant?”
Boyens set his jaw stubbornly. “I’ve seen records of your ships firing on the hypernet gate at Sancere.”
“To cause a safe collapse. But if you’ve seen the records that heavy cruiser brought from Kalixa, you know that there weren’t any Alliance warships at Kalixa when the gate here failed.”
“That seems to be true.” Boyens furrowed his brow in thought, staring at the deck. “The Alliance was close enough to do it. That was our reasoning. You mention the aliens, but they never collapsed a hypernet gate in the border region facing them. If they were going to attack us, why attack us so far from their border with us?”
There was something critical going on, Geary thought after the interview was over, something far more important than the Syndics blaming the Alliance for the collapse of the hypernet gates at Kalixa and Sancere as well. Something about how the Syndics thought about the aliens. Unable to figure out what it was, he filed the half-formed idea away in the back of his mind.
It took three and a half days to reach the jump point for Parnosa. As the haunted ruins of Kalixa vanished and the gray nothingness of jump space surrounded the ships, Geary could almost feel the sense of relief sweeping through Dauntless. He relaxed, too, knowing that the fleet had a long jump ahead. Eight and a half days, almost the limit for normal jump-drive range. By the end of the next week, the strange pressures of jump space would be making people nervous and irritable, but he didn’t expect any real problems from that.
Seven days later, as Geary sat watching the lights of jump space and trying not to let the strange itching sensation that grew the longer people were in jump space get to him, his hatch alert sounded with what seemed particular urgency.
A moment later, Tanya Desjani stomped into the stateroom, looking ready to tear a hole in the hull with her bare hands. “I will not tolerate that woman on my ship any longer!”
“Which woman?” Geary asked, already knowing the answer. “And what did she do?”
“The politician! You know how she’s been acting! You’ve been there when she said nice things to me!”