Free Relentless by Jack Campbell Page A

close to the border, I guess.”
    “I’d never seen one operational before Corvus,” Desjani reminded him.
    Mention of the first star the fleet had reached during its retreat from the Syndic home star system jerked Geary’s mind back to that time, and his eyes went to the portion of the display showing the Alliance fleet. At Corvus he’d been appalled to see the Alliance fleet falling apart as every ship raced to engage the weak Syndic defenders. But those days were past. The Alliance fleet held its formation now, trusting to Geary’s command to ensure that the Syndic flotilla would be crushed. He wondered how much small gestures like reintroducing saluting to the fleet had helped forge that discipline. Their bravery had never been in question, but now these Alliance warships fought as intelligently as they did courageously.
    The field of battle where they’d be engaging the enemy this time mostly involved empty space, of course, and, for the rest, Heradao wasn’t too unusual as habitable star systems went. Four planets orbited in the inner system, the closest to the star only about two light-minutes out from it in a fast orbit, as if the small world were trying to outrun the heat and radiation pummeling it. The other three inner-system planets orbited about four light-minutes, seven light-minutes, and nine and a half light-minutes from the star. Given the intensity of the star Heradao, the world at seven-light minutes out had not perfect but endurable conditions for human life, and humans had taken advantage of that even though at that distance from its star the radiation bombardment was probably high enough to cause extra health problems. Cities and towns dotted the surface of that planet, and even though Heradao had been bypassed by the Syndic hypernet, that third world was apparently attractive or wealthy enough to sustain a decent population. Surprisingly for a star system bypassed by the hypernet, the cold fourth world had more human activity than had once been the case according to the old Syndic records the Alliance fleet had seized at Sancere. “Are there any indications regarding the POW camp on the third planet?”
    The operations watch-stander nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s still there, still occupied, and we’re picking up message traffic that indicates it still holds Alliance prisoners.”
    “It looks like we will be visiting the third planet after we deal with these Syndic flotillas, then.” The middle ranges of Heradao Star System were empty except for a few asteroids and the Syndic craft. The next planet out was a super gas giant well over three light-hours distant from the star. With all of its moons, the super gas giant resembled its own solar system, and was nearly big enough to have become a brown dwarf star itself. Apparently the giant had sucked up everything else in the outer reaches of the star system. Geary wondered if its larger moons in wide orbits had once been planets themselves before the giant captured them.
    A lot of Syndic activity could be seen around the gas giant, currently orbiting on the other side of Heradao’s star from the Alliance fleet, indicating substantial off-planet mining and manufacturing under way. But diverting to that gas giant to loot its mines for raw materials to fill the bunkers of the auxiliaries would take the fleet too far from the path to the jump point for Padronis.
    “Do we have to fight?” Rione suddenly asked. “Can’t we just race past the Syndic defenders? You’ve told me that velocities above point two light speed cause so much relativistic distortion that Alliance and Syndic targeting systems can’t compensate well enough to reliably hit other ships. If this fleet heads for the jump point for Padronis at a high enough velocity, the Syndics won’t be able to do damage to us.”
    “Or us to them,” Desjani muttered too low for Rione to hear.
    Geary thought about it, then shook his head. “It’d be too easy.” Before an incredulous Rione