“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Rione said, “but one more battleship and three more heavy cruisers won’t make any significant change to the odds against the Syndics. Nor can they have significant numbers of reinforcements still coming unless our intelligence is far from the mark. There’s still something missing, something the Syndics don’t want us to see.” Rione shook her head, gazing at the display before her. “The Syndic leadership has stayed in control because they are willing to do whatever it takes to maintain that power. They know you have defeated their flotillas time and again. They know their fixed defenses in this star system couldn’t defeat a fleet. We’ve seen the ambush they prepared if this fleet had come through the hypernet gate here. It was thorough and deadly, but the fleet under the command of Admiral Geary has escaped certain doom more than once. What is their hidden card, the one the Syndic leaders planned to play if all else failed to stop a man whom they have failed to stop time and again?”
Desjani spoke with exaggerated patience. “Madam Co-President, the fleet’s sensors aren’t infallible, but they have scanned this system repeatedly. It is not overconfidence to say that we know everything the Syndics have here. They planned on the ambush at the hypernet gate destroying this fleet.”
“I’m aware of what the sensors report.” Her tone remaining almost distant, Rione stared at her display. “There’s something missing,” she repeated. “Every instinct I have tells me that the Syndics would have insurance, something else in the all-too-likely event that Black Jack Geary produced another miracle.”
Geary looked from Rione to Desjani, his own misgivings springing back to life. “The Syndic flotilla’s actions imply there’s something else going on here, but if there is another threat big enough to imperil this fleet, we haven’t found it. What could it be?”
Sakai spoke for the first time. “As I said, I have little direct experience with military matters, but I do have some knowledge of dealing with opponents in ways they do not expect. If what you seek is here, and you are confident that we have seen all that is here, then we must have seen it and not known what it means.”
“Maybe intelligence has spotted something. It’s their job to figure out what things mean.” Geary called Lieutenant Iger again. This time, Lieutenant Iger had the unhappy look of an intelligence officer who was about to impart something that wasn’t going to make his superior happy. “Lieutenant, do you have anything regarding any threats in this star system that wouldn’t have been apparent before now?”
Iger appeared startled by the question. “No, sir. Nothing we haven’t reported. We’ve fed everything we’ve found regarding threats into the fleet combat systems. But, sir, I was going to call you after we ran a triple check on our analysis of the Syndic net. We do apparently have something odd going on.”
Naturally. Something else odd. “And what would that be?”
“Sir, regarding the location of the Syndic Executive Council.” Lieutenant Iger frowned down at something on his own display, then made a helpless gesture. “We have identified a location that has firm priority within the Syndic net.”
“Which planet is it?” Geary pressed.
“It’s not a planet, sir. It’s in the small group of Syndic warships at the jump point for Mandalon.”
Geary’s eyes went to his display. “They’re on that battleship?”
“That is our assessment, yes, sir. As I said, we were rerunning our analysis—”
“Why? Why would they be on that battleship?”
“We have to assume that they’re preparing to run, sir.”
“But if the Syndic leaders are on that battleship so they can escape, why haven’t they already run? It would have made more sense to leave this star system before we arrived so it wouldn’t so obviously be running. And how can they hope to maintain their authority if they flee this star system?”
Iger looked apologetic. “Sir, we don’t know the answers to that. We have to assume that there is a reason the Syndic leaders haven’t yet fled and that they have some grounds for thinking they can politically survive such a flight.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Geary looked to Desjani, Rione, and Sakai. “Intelligence says the Syndic Executive Council is on that battleship at the jump point for Mandalon. Intelligence doesn’t know why they haven’t already run if that’s their intention.”
“They’re planning on doing something before they run,” Desjani replied.
“That’s what intel thought. But what?”
“I don’t know. I can only think of one reason why as a military officer I’d want to get away fast after performing an action.”
Memories flashed into Geary’s mind. The last moments of his heavy cruiser Merlon in Grendel star system. “If you’ve activated a power-core overload on your ship. A self-destruct command. You need to be able to get off the ship fast after you give that order.”
“Right. But what could the Syndic Executive Council want to do that’s anything like that?”
Rione answered Desjani, though her reply sounded more like a prayer. “May the living stars preserve us.” She stood up, her face growing pale as an expression of horror flitted across it. “Senator Sakai was correct. We’re looking at it. Ancestors save us, it’s right there, and we didn’t see it.”
Desjani frowned, searching her own display. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about what we expect to see and what really is there! How did this fleet defeat that Syndic flotilla at Lakota? It used a large number of ships as an improvised minefield, and the Syndics didn’t realize what it was because it didn’t look like a minefield.” Rione’s hand came up, pointing. “The hypernet gate.”
Geary felt a hard knot tighten in his guts. “It has a safe-fail system installed. We confirmed that.”
“Yes, we did.” Rione turned a burning gaze on him, then stepped forward quickly, leaning over close so only Geary and Desjani could hear her. “But systems can be reprogrammed, Admiral Geary. The collapse of a hypernet gate can be scaled down to minimize the energy release, or scaled up to make it a deadlier weapon.”
He got it then. When Captain Cresida had first worked up the necessary algorithms to scale down the energy release from a collapsing hypernet gate, she had also had to work up the reverse, the ways to increase the energy release. He had given that set of algorithms to Rione, not trusting himself with such a weapon.
But the Syndics would have done the same calculations, eventually reached the same conclusions, discovered how to reliably turn their own hypernet gates into weapons that could kill fleets and star systems at a single blow. A self-destruct command encompassing an entire star system, aimed at taking down this fleet.
Desjani’s face had gone rigid, and she spoke with extreme care. “Can a safe-fail system be reversed? Made to trigger a powerful blast? Worse than at Kalixa?”
“I don’t know,” Geary replied, marveling at the steadiness of his own voice. “I can find out.” Like Desjani, he didn’t question that the Syndic leadership might annihilate even this star system if that price bought the destruction of the Alliance fleet. He had seen far too many incidents where star-system CEOs had ordered actions with a similar callous disregard for their own people living in those star systems.
Rione pointed again, this time to the battleship and heavy cruisers at the jump point for Mandalon. “They had it all set up. They’re ready to escape. If the ambush failed, they send the collapse command, then jump to safety.”