Geary sat, watching the bombardment aimed at Sutrah Five arcing down into the atmosphere, wondering how it looked to those on the planet’s surface. “It must be a very helpless feeling.”
“Sir?” Desjani’s question made Geary realized he’d spoken out loud.
“I was just thinking how it’d feel to be on a planet and see that bombardment coming in,” Geary admitted. “No way to stop it, impossible to run fast enough to avoid one of the rounds if you were at a target site, no shelter capable of withstanding the impact.”
Desjani’s eyes shaded as she considered the idea. “I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms. Alliance worlds have felt it, too, and I know I’ve felt helpless when I’ve heard about it, not able to have stopped it. But, yes, I’d much rather be in something that can maneuver and fight.”
By now the kinetic rounds aimed at Sutrah Five were all glowing brightly with the heat of their passage, dozens of deadly fireflies curving toward the planet’s surface. From Dauntless’s position, Geary could see part of Sutrah Five covered by night and watch the brilliant display of fiery destruction lighting the darkness of the skies there. “There’s no honor in killing helpless people,” he murmured, thinking of what Falco had urged.
To his surprise, Captain Desjani nodded in agreement. “No.”
He remembered her once expressing regret that the null-field weapons were short-range and couldn’t work near gravity wells, and therefore couldn’t be used against planets. Geary wondered if Desjani still felt that way.
He zoomed in the scale on his display, getting a good picture of one of the targets, a still-functioning industrial site that, on multispectral imagery, displayed heat from warm equipment and radiation of electronic signals leaking from wiring. There were no signs of people at the location, though, all of them apparently having taken the warning seriously and evacuated. Geary didn’t really see the kinetic round come in, as it was moving far too fast for his eye to register, but his mind imagined seeing a blur rocket in followed by an intense flash of light automatically blocked by Dauntless’s sensors. Pulling back the scale again, Geary saw shock waves radiating out from a cloud of vaporized material, shattering buildings and making the planet’s surface ripple like the hide of a living beast stung by an insect. He pulled back the scale again, much farther, seeing the mushroom-shaped clouds that mankind had grown to know all too well rising high into the skies of Sutrah Five as impacts occurred at multiple sites, smashing in moments all of the industrial and transportation hubs that humans had spent centuries creating on Sutrah Five.
Torn between fascination at the destruction and sorrow over its necessity, Geary selected one special site and homed in on it. The target in the mountain range didn’t show as much obvious destruction as other locations, because the kinetic round fired at it had been shaped to penetrate deeply into the rock on impact. The crater was deeper but smaller than at other locations, as if a spear had lanced into the planet seeking a special target. As it had, because this was where the hidden command post had once existed. Geary wondered if the high-ranking leaders who’d been willing to subject others to the risk of bombardment had themselves had time to realize they wouldn’t be safe after all.
“I know the Syndic military base is an obsolete burden to them,” Desjani remarked, “but it wouldn’t have cost us much to eliminate it as well, as long as we were trying to teach the Syndics a lesson.”
Geary shook his head, his eyes still on the impact site where the planetary high command had been sheltered. “That depends on what lesson we’re trying to teach, doesn’t it? Vengeance? Or justice?”
Desjani spent a long time quiet. “Vengeance is easier to inflict, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t require much thought.”
She nodded slowly. Whatever lesson he’d taught the Syndics, Desjani seemed to be thinking a great deal.
On his display, Geary could see the swarm of projectiles headed for Sutrah Four. The people there would be seeing the impacts on their sister world and would know a similar fate awaited many locations on the planet they called home. They would also get to watch the bombardment heading their way for another hour or so, prolonging the suffering of their experience. He wondered if they’d blame the Alliance or the Syndic leaders who had been willing to sacrifice them.
ANOTHER conference, the atmosphere tense because every ship commander present knew that Geary intended laying out his next course of action. Granted, besides Geary himself, only Captain Desjani was actually physically present. Once again, Co-President Rione wasn’t in the room. Geary wondered this time if her absence had anything to do with the rumors that she and Geary were personally involved.
The absence of Captain Fighting Falco was a pleasant surprise but left Geary worrying what Falco was up to. Falco didn’t seem like the sort to give up easily, and Geary would’ve much preferred to see any political games being played right before him to having them occur in shadows outside of his knowledge. He hoped that Rione’s spies would tell her of anything Geary had to worry about and that she would pass those reports on to him.
Geary looked around the table, knowing he was about to set off a firestorm and seeing no alternative. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Syndics are drawing a net about us. The traps we encountered in this system are clear evidence that the Syndics are predicting our next objectives well enough to prepare for us. As you all know,” or should know, Geary added to himself, “the Syndics had light ships posted at all of the jump points in this system. As the light from our arrival reached them, three of those ships jumped out. There are three possible destinations through those gates, and all will be warned of our possible impending arrival.”
He waited for any comments, but there were none. Everyone seemed to be waiting to hear his proposal. “I’ve taken a look at our possible objectives from this point, and the reachable stars beyond those, and it’s all too clear that the Syndics will be able to channel our options down to the point of being able to trap us with greatly superior forces no matter what we do.” He paused, letting that sink in. “I have no doubt that we’d inflict terrible losses on those Syndic forces, but this fleet would be destroyed in the process.” That was a valuable offering to their pride, Geary thought, as well as a reminder that this was still about trying to get home.
“The Marine exploitation groups were able to get an outdated but useful Syndicate Worlds star system guide from files left behind at the labor camp.” Geary nodded toward Colonel Carabali. “After reviewing that, I believe there’s another option, which I think gives us a chance to not only avoid that trap but also to inflict a powerful blow to the Syndics, totally disrupt their plans, and leave us many options for heading back toward Alliance space again.” He used his finger to draw a line through the display. “We take the fleet back to the jump point we used to arrive. Not to go back to Kaliban but to jump to Strabo.”
“Strabo?” someone blurted after several seconds of silence. “What’s at Strabo?”
“Nothing. Not even enough rocks to have developed much of a human presence and now completely abandoned.”
The captain of the Polaris was staring at the display. “Strabo is almost directly away from Alliance space.”
“Yes,” Geary agreed. “The Syndics have to believe the chance we’d jump back toward the way we came is very remote. They haven’t sent anyone through that jump point since we’ve arrived. Once they get word that we did, they’ll consider a jump to Strabo even more remote. But we’re going to throw them off worse than that.” He swung his finger again, knowing his next words would trigger a much stronger reaction. “From Strabo we jump to Cydoni.”