The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian (39 page)

A roar of welcome sounded as Captain Desjani entered the shuttle dock. She walked past cheering sailors and Marines until she reached Master Chief Gioninni and fixed him with a warning look.

But Gioninni just grinned. “Captain Desjani! Your reputation proceeds you!”

Senior Chief Tarrini nodded. “Queen Callisto can find no fault with Captain Desjani.”

“She is judged worthy to enter your realm by Davy Jones,” Gunnery Sergeant Orvis added.

Gioninni’s smile faded, and he cocked a stern eye on her. “Captain Desjani, you are hereby sentenced to command of the battle cruiser
Dauntless
, the finest ship in the fleet, but one crewed by the biggest band of slackers, misfits, scoundrels, deadbeats, and slovenly sailors ever to sail the stars! Can you turn such a crew into real sailors, Captain?”

Desjani’s reply could be heard easily over the laughter following King Jove’s sentence. “I already have!”

“Then enter into my realm of Sol Star System, Captain Desjani, and be a member in good standing of the ancient and revered order of Voyagers!”

Amid renewed cheers, Tanya walked out past Geary with a salute and a wink. He returned the salute, then looked over at Charban and the senators. “You’re welcome to meet the King and Queen as well.”

Charban squared his shoulders with dramatic exaggeration and marched toward the Royal Family of Sol, but Costa and Suva hesitated. Sakai, after a few seconds, shook his head. “This is an event for the military, Admiral. We should not intrude.”

“This is an event for anyone who travels in space,” Geary corrected.

“We’re not . . . like you,” Senator Suva said, her voice tinged with what sounded like regret.

“Are you sure of that?” Geary asked.

The senators looked back at him as if they had never considered that question before.

—

THE
next day, they arrived at Sol.

All signs of merriment and celebration had vanished except for a single stuffed bunny that a hell-lance battery had adopted as a mascot. But those weapons were powered down for arrival, as were all other weapons aboard
Dauntless
. The shields were at full strength, because that was a necessary secondary protection against radiation and other hazards to navigation, but otherwise the warship was in as peaceful a configuration as a battle cruiser could be.

“I don’t like it,” Desjani grumbled for the hundredth time as she sat on the bridge.

“The requirements for entering Sol don’t allow for exceptions,” Geary reminded her for at least the fiftieth time. “And Sol Star System is demilitarized. There are no weapons and no threats.”

“There is no place where humans are that fits that description,” Desjani objected.

“Two minutes to hypernet exit,” Lieutenant Castries announced.

Near her, the three senators jostled each other for position near the single observer seat on the bridge. Rione and Charban were also on the bridge for the historic moment, but well off to one side where Lieutenant Yuon had made some room for them.

The last minute passed in silence, everyone lost in their own thoughts.

Nothing was abruptly replaced by Everything as they left the hypernet. Off to one side, a distant spark of light marked Sol, the home star of humanity.

But Geary couldn’t spare time to sightsee. Instead, his eyes went to another part of his display, where warning signs had sprung to life on a dozen warships of unfamiliar design.

“I
told you!” Desjani said. “It’s a good thing they’re too far away to pose an immediate threat!”

“They’re not Syndics,” Lieutenant Yuon reported, bewildered.

Orbiting half a light-hour past the gate, the strange warships were too distant to attack, but their presence here was inexplicable.

Aside from those ships, all of the other space traffic in Sol Star System looked routine. Merchant ships swung between planets, faster couriers and passenger ships were on flatter trajectories, and near most of the worlds orbiting Sol smaller craft could be seen dipping into and out of planetary atmospheres.

Geary sat, his eyes on his display, letting his thoughts settle as he took in everything, trying not to be distracted by the names of the planets, which had assumed the status of legend. Mars. Jupiter. Venus. Old Earth itself.
Dauntless
sailed among the monuments to humanity’s first achievements, mankind’s first steps into space. But amidst those fabled names and worlds were warships of unknown origin and intentions. “Does anybody know what we’re dealing with here?” he finally asked.

Senator Suva sounded and looked bewildered. “Sol Star System is neutral and demilitarized. Only . . . only ceremonial military forces are ever allowed here.”

“These do not appear to be ceremonial,” Rione answered. “You do not recognize them, Admiral?”

“No. Neither do our combat systems.”
Dauntless
’s sensors were evaluating everything they could see on the mystery warships, but even though tentative identifications of sensors and weapons sites were appearing on their hulls, the
SHIP TYPE
and
SHIP ALLEGIANCE
tags on the displays remained blank.

“Syndics,” Costa declared. “They modified some of their designs—”

“Our systems could spot that easily,” Geary said, trying not to sound dismissive of the senator. “They are not Syndics.”

A virtual window appeared near Geary, revealing Lieutenant Iger. “Sir, nothing matching those warships is in any of our intelligence databases.”

“Are they human?”

“Definitely human, sir. Even though we can’t identify the ships, there are some design features on their hulls that hint at their origin.” Lieutenant Iger looked unhappy as he spoke his next words. “Sol.”

“Sol?” Geary did his best not to sound angry at Iger. “Everything human came from Sol. Are you saying these warships
belong
to Sol?”

“No, sir. But they are human in origin.”

Geary glanced at the six Dancer ships surrounding
Dauntless
. Iger’s information wasn’t as useless as it had seemed at first. “That’s as near as you can identify them? Just a common origin at Sol?”

“If the design features we see are being interpreted correctly,” Iger said, “the design of those warships and the designs we’re familiar with diverged
at
Sol.”

“There is nothing unusual being broadcast in the star system ‘notices to shipping,’” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “The notices provide the same language about the star system being demilitarized that we have in our procedures for entering Sol Star System.”

“And yet there they are.” Desjani grimaced. “Six of them are big, but smaller than us. Not heavy cruisers, and not battleships. Sort of like those scout battleships the Alliance tried.”

“The ones that got wiped out in battle?” Geary asked, even though he knew the answer.

“Yeah, those.” She tapped a quick command. “Whatever these are, they’re a bit smaller than the Alliance scout battleships. Hard to tell yet what kind of armor they’ve got.”

“We’ll have to watch how they maneuver,” Lieutenant Iger chimed in. “That will give us some means to calculate their mass. Any mass in excess of a reasonable estimate for that size ship will likely represent armor.”

“What about the smaller ships?” Geary asked. His display was rapidly filling in details on the six escorts with the six bigger warships, showing barracuda shapes reminiscent of Alliance destroyers and Syndic Hunter-Killers, but not as large as either. “They’ve got less mass than even Syndic HuKs.”

“Corvettes?” Desjani guessed. “No. They’re even smaller than the Syndic Nickel corvettes.”

“Who do they belong to?” Senator Suva demanded. “You should know that! How can you not know that?”

Geary sighed and rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Senator, wherever these ships came from is not anywhere that the Alliance has current information on.”

“Where would that be?”

“I think I know.” Everyone’s attention centered on Senator Sakai. “I have studied much history,” he said. “Including the period when humanity first left Sol. The ships from Sol went in all directions, but there were two main paths. One path led inward along the spiral arm of the galaxy in which we reside. That resulted in the colonies near Sol in that direction, then the Alliance, the other groupings of star systems such as the Callas Republic and the Rift Federation, and beyond that the Syndicate Worlds. The other path led outward along our arm of the galaxy. Some of the earliest human colonies sprang into existence there. Perhaps these ships come from stars on the other side of the expansion from the one we occupy.”

Geary tapped in the same queries that everyone else was, seeing an image of the galaxy appear near his display with human-occupied space highlighted upon it. The image gave him momentary pause.
We think we’ve come so far. In human terms, we have. Hundreds of light-years. Unimaginable distances. But lay out the region of the galaxy that we have explored and occupied, and it is just a small piece of one portion of that galaxy, which itself is but one of countless other galaxies. I’m used to space being huge, but even for me it is impossible to grasp how HUGE the universe is.

Rione commented first. “I never realized how lopsided human expansion has been. In terms of stars and distance, the vast majority has been inward toward the center of the galaxy. We’ve spread up and down and inward. I always assumed we started expanding in those directions. But my data says we first started going outward.”

“Something stopped us,” Costa said, her voice suspicious. “More threats like the enigmas who stopped our expansion inward?”

“How could that secret have been kept for so long and so close to Old Earth?” Rione asked. “The Syndics kept knowledge of the enigmas from us for a century, but that was because their contact with the enigmas was in regions of space far from our own, and the war drastically limited communications.”

“And,” Charban added, “we had stopped looking for other intelligent species after so many stars and worlds had yielded none. In the early days of human expansion, we expected to encounter such beings at any time.”

Geary had his eyes on the increasingly detailed images that
Dauntless
’s sensors were creating of the unknown warships. “They look human. The ships, I mean. We have some experience with nonhuman spacecraft designs. I don’t see anything on those warships that looks like the differences we saw on ships built by the enigmas or the Kicks or the Dancers.”

“What do I do?” Desjani asked him.

“Head for Old Earth,” Geary directed. “Transmit the standard arrival message to the Sol Star System authorities there. We’ll continue with our mission until something makes us do otherwise.”

Had one or more of the senators been ready to put their oar in? But none of them did, perhaps because none of them could think of any other useful form of action right now.

“Those may be human-built ships,” Desjani commented after adjusting the course of
Dauntless
slightly, “but look at all that extra junk on them. They look like something from one of those space fantasies. What do you call that stuff?”

Lieutenant Castries answered. “Frippery and furbelows, Captain. You’re right. Those ships look like the illustrations to a space fantasy with kings and princesses and wizards. They’re crawling with decorative detail. The ship’s systems are trying to analyze the purposes of those features, but I don’t think they have any other purpose but decoration.”

“Is that why the fins on those ships are so big?” Lieutenant Yuon asked. “They’ve got a lot more height than should be required for sensors and shield generators.”

Desjani raised an eyebrow toward Castries. “You read space fantasy, Lieutenant?”

“Not . . . much . . . lately, Captain. I mean, yes, Captain.”

“Everyone needs some romance,” Geary said, while Lieutenant Castries acted as if she were suddenly absorbed in analyzing sensor readings.

“Oh, please.” Desjani rolled her eyes. “One of those stories where the beautiful, brainy princess wakes the sleeping Black Jack with a kiss so that together they can overthrow the evil star demon and live happily ever after?”

Geary realized his mouth was hanging open and shut it hastily. “Tell me that you’re kidding.”

“Nope. Lieutenant Castries?”

“Those are usually pretty good,” the hapless Lieutenant admitted. “They don’t get you right, Admiral, of course.”

“Would you like to see some of the illustrations for those?” Desjani asked.

“No, I would not. If I may get back to the situation we’re facing, you’re telling me these outer-star ships are extensively ornamented, and not for any useful purpose.”

Lieutenant Iger, who had still been listening but wisely refraining from commenting up until now, nodded. “It might not impact their fighting capabilities, Admiral, but it does indicate they have the luxury of investing resources into nonfunctional ornamentation.”

Rione shook her head. “I have seen a great deal of nonfunctional ornamentation in my time, and I can say with certainty that not all of it was purchased because the person doing the buying could afford it. We may be dealing with status, appearance, and other issues that have little to do with simple monetary calculations.”

Lieutenant Castries spoke up again, sounding excited. “Captain, I asked our systems to evaluate the fins on those ships, adding in variables for nonfunctionality. When asked to do that, our systems have evaluated a high probability that the fins were designed for form rather than strength.”

“Ostentation?” Senator Suva asked. “Display? Are we certain these are warships?”

“We have identified some weapons,” Lieutenant Iger said. “Not too many, yet, but the ships are definitely armed.”

Charban was shaking his head, mouth pursed. “Speaking as an outside observer, I have seen a lot of ships. I have never seen any that look like that which weren’t warships.”

“Common design ancestry,” Senator Sakai said. “That is what our systems analyzed, is it not? These ships came from the same sources as the one we are aboard. We can reasonably estimate function from appearance.”

“They’ve finally seen us,” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “They’re altering vectors.”

Geary watched his display as the unknown warships turned inward toward Sol and began accelerating. “They’re coming our way but not directly at us.”

“Look at their vector. They first want to block our direct path back to the hypernet gate,” Desjani said. “Wait and see. Whoever they are, they are moving to block our access to the hypernet gate. That is not a friendly act.”

“Maybe they—” Suva stopped speaking, then shook her head. “It does look as if they’re trying to keep us from leaving before warning us off, if that’s what they intend.”

“They’re trying to trap us?” Costa demanded.

Geary looked to Rione and Charban. “Please tell the Dancers we would like them to stay close to us. If they ask about the other warships, tell them we’re trying to figure out who they are and what they want.”

“You make telling them that sound so simple,” Rione commented sarcastically. “We will try our best.”

“Captain?” the communications watch-stander called. “We have a message coming in from the unidentified warships. It uses an old format that’s standard for comms in Sol Star System and is addressed to our, uh, ‘senior superior command supervising authority and controller.’”

“Redundant much?” Desjani growled. “Forward it to the Admiral.”

“Let everyone on the bridge see it,” Geary ordered. “Envoys Rione and Charban, please wait on that message to the Dancers until we see what these other ships tell us.”

An image appeared before him of a man well past middle age seated on a bridge not too different from that of
Dauntless
. No surprise there. The most efficient arrangement of controls and watch stations had been worked out centuries ago. Wherever anyone went in human space, they would find the configuration of a ship’s bridge to be roughly similar.

The man wore a uniform with such elaborate design and ornamentation that Geary found himself searching for the rank insignia and unable to sort it out among the many other glittering objects adorning the outfit. The suits of Syndic CEOs were well-known for their intricate and expensive tailoring, but this uniform would have put any Syndic CEO to shame. The man’s hair was about shoulder length and as ostentatiously styled as his uniform, the top of the hair formed into a stiff peak that ran back like the plume on an ancient helmet. On the man’s right and left breasts, a solid sheet of award ribbons and medals formed a multicolored breastplate reaching from shoulder to waist.

It was all undoubtedly meant to be impressive, but as Geary took in the gaudy image, he heard Tanya Desjani not quite stifle a giggle. Elsewhere on the bridge of
Dauntless
, there were muffled laughs and suppressed sounds of wonderment.

“I am His Excellency Captain Commodore First Rank Stellar Guard of the Fist of the People Earun Tavistorevas, Paramount of the Shield of Sol,” the extravagant officer declared in a bored tone of voice. “I condescend to speak to the lowly representatives of the barbarous government of the inconsequential so-called Alliance. You have entered this star system without permission. You have brought with you tramontane creatures whose presence is an affront to the unsullied Earth. Hear my command. You will disable all combat systems. You will graciously welcome security auditors who will board your vulgar craft in search of impurities and render it impotent to do harm. You will surrender the tramontane conveyances to us. Once you have complied with all instructions and requirements, I will permit you to depart upon your plea for clemency. By the authority granted me to ensure the security of all, this is Earun Tavistorevas.”