After a moment, that officer nodded. “Confirmed, Captain. The field will include the entire fleet.”
“Confirm destination set as Zevos.”
“Destination confirmed as Zevos.”
Desjani looked at Geary. “Request permission to activate hypernet key for transport to Zevos.”
“Permission granted.”
Desjani tapped a couple of more times, then the stars vanished.
Geary had barely remembered what the view looked like within a hypernet channel. “There really is nothing to see.”
“No.” Desjani spread her hands. “The scientists say we’re in some sort of bubble where light as we know it doesn’t penetrate. So it’s just dark.”
Just dark. No sensation of speed or any movement at all. “How long again?”
“Eight days, fourteen hours, and six minutes for this trip. The farther you’re going, the faster the speed relative to the outside universe. It’s sort of weird, but this is a long haul, so we’re going faster than if it were a short haul on the hypernet.”
“A shorter trip can take the same amount of time as a longer trip?”
“Yes. Or more time.” Desjani waved at the darkness filling the display of outside conditions. “Like I said, it’s sort of weird. You’d have to ask a scientist to explain why, though I’ve never been sure they really understand it. They have some impressive names for what they think is happening, though.”
Even if a straight-shot journey had been possible, covering that distance by jump drives would have taken at least a couple of months. Yet at the moment, with a battle that might finally end the war looming, those eight days, fourteen hours, and six minutes seemed far too long a time. “I want this over.”
“Yes, sir. Me, too. Just remember how long it’s been coming for the rest of us.”
The war had begun a hundred years ago. Desjani and the rest of Dauntless’s crew, everyone in the fleet except Geary, had been waiting for this as long as they’d been alive.
Looked at that way, he could wait another eight days.
If the aliens could still divert the fleet, they didn’t do it. Zevos boasted a star system with two marginally inhabitable worlds, a very large population, and a lot of colonies and outposts elsewhere on moons, asteroids, and near gas giants. Not a single Syndic warship was visible to the fleet’s sensors as the Alliance warships popped out of the hypernet gate. “They’ve pulled any mobile defenses into the home system,” Desjani suggested. “Probably a lot of the fixed defenses were pulled up and shipped there, too.”
“Probably.” A Syndic traffic-control buoy near the gate was squawking at the Alliance warships, trying to direct them into proper, approved traffic lanes for progress in-system. “Diamond, kill that buoy.”
“Diamond, aye,” the heavy cruiser acknowledged. “Buoy will be destroyed in approximately thirty-five seconds.”
The jump point they wanted was only a light-hour and a half distant from the hypernet gate. Geary got the fleet on a course for that point, taking some glee in knowing that the Syndic authorities in Zevos Star System would only see the Alliance warships in several hours, just before the Alliance ships jumped out of Zevos. Since the Syndics had forgotten how to use extended-jump-range capability, they’d think the Alliance fleet was bound for another star named Marchen, which was more distant from the Syndic home star system than Zevos.
“What do you want to do about those merchant ships approaching the hypernet gate?” Desjani asked.
Despite his deception maneuvers, Geary didn’t want word of his arrival at Zevos spreading through Syndic space too quickly. He used the maneuvering display to check some solutions as fast as he could tag some Alliance units and ask for an intercept. “Twentieth Destroyer Squadron, you are to intercept and destroy the designated Syndic merchant ships. Do not pursue or engage other targets without orders. Rejoin the fleet prior to jump.”
“Twentieth Destroyer Squadron, aye!” Gleeful at getting to hammer the Syndics while the rest of the fleet just transited to the jump point, the destroyers in the Twentieth Squadron leaped forward after their prey.
Geary watched the destroyers charging off in pursuit, then went over his formation choices again. He figured the Syndics wouldn’t be anywhere near where the fleet came out of jump space at the Syndic home star system, but he wanted to be ready in case he was wrong. “Captain Smyth, I want your auxiliaries to top off the fuel-cell reserves on every ship as well as their expendable armaments. Let me know if you’ll have any trouble getting that done before we jump.”
Fifteen hours to the jump point. Ten days in jump space. All to get back to where his command of the fleet had started.
SIX
A collective sound like that of a pride of lions sighting prey came from the watch-standers on Dauntless’s bridge as the Alliance fleet arrived in the Syndic home star system. The fleet had fled this star system six months earlier, running for its life in the face of terrible losses and overwhelming enemy superiority in warships. Now it was back, and the wreckage of those Syndic warships littered space along the path the fleet had taken home. “We’ve got them,” Desjani whispered, her eyes gleaming with anticipation.
Geary paused to savor the moment despite his own resolve not to be distracted. The Alliance fleet had arrived at an angle relative to where it had been when Geary first assumed command, about a quarter of the way around the outer extent of the star system from the jump point the fleet had once used to flee to Corvus. Three light-hours away, the hypernet gate for the star system hung in space. Even from this distance the fleet’s sensors could pick out the thick walls of minefields hanging just outside the gate, their numbers and the density with which the mines were laid going a long way toward negating the stealth characteristics of individual mines. Just outside the minefields, another mass of merchant ships waited, hundreds of FACs visible attached to them, ready to launch and strike as an attacking force staggered clear of the minefields. Behind the merchant ships, only fifteen light-minutes from the hypernet gate, the main body of the Syndic defenders waited, a mere twelve battleships and sixteen battle cruisers, but accompanied by sixty-one heavy cruisers, fifty light cruisers, and one hundred ninety-seven HuKs.
Most importantly, the Alliance fleet’s sensors confirmed that the hypernet gate had a safe-fail system installed. Not that anyone on the Alliance side had doubted that protection would be in place, but actually seeing a safe-fail system present relieved any lingering concerns.
Elsewhere in the system, there were a few light cruisers and HuKs transiting between planets, and far off, almost opposite the position of the Alliance fleet on the other side of the star system, a single battleship and three heavy cruisers hovered in a small group.
“I know many of those battleships and battle cruisers are new construction, but where did the Syndics get that many escorts?” Geary wondered.
“They must have stripped system-defense forces from a lot of star systems,” Desjani suggested. “If we’d run head-on into that trap, it would have been a repeat of the fleet’s last visit here. By the time we cleared the ambush, we would have lost so many ships that the Syndics could have won.” Her gaze wandered across her display. “Everything in fixed orbit in this star system has rail guns or particle-beam batteries on it. Good thing you saved our rocks.”
The Syndic home star system certainly constituted a target-rich environment. In addition to the fixed defenses, the planets in the star system boasted many cities and colonies, though the primary inhabited world also had vast stretches of what looked like parklands, with grand lodges set within them at such wide intervals that nobody in one of the lodges could have seen another lodge. “Nice place,” Geary commented.