Read Online The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian by Jack Campbell - Free Book Online

assurances to all of you that I will make every effort to look out for you, to ensure that when we return home, you are treated as you deserve after your service to the Alliance.”
That isn’t enough. Of course I’m going to look out for all who have served under me. That’s my responsibility. But I can’t promise there will be no problems once we return. What else do I say to let them know I won’t abandon them?
    Oh, hell. Just say that.
“We did not leave anyone behind anywhere in alien space. No one will be left behind after we return home.”
    He ended the recording, then called the bridge. “Tanya, could you look over something for me?”
    “You mean since I have nothing else to do but oversee a battle cruiser and her crew?” Desjani asked.
    “It won’t take much time,” Geary promised.
    “Gee, I’ve never heard that one before. All right, Admiral. Will you be coming to the bridge soon?” she added pointedly.
    He glanced at the time. “I’ll be up there in a while. There’s no rush, is there?”
    “No, of course not,” Desjani agreed.
    Neither of them knew exactly when things would begin happening. There were too many uncertainties about travel times within the other star systems a certain ship had been transiting. But sometime within the next twelve hours, the plan proposed by General Drakon’s representatives would either succeed or fail.
    Geary made a show of wandering up to the bridge of
Dauntless
. He stopped several times to talk with members of the crew. Most of them asked variations on “when are we leaving?” He replied with variations on “soon.”
    On the bridge, Desjani nodded to him, gesturing to her display. “Good update, Admiral. Do you want to send it?”
    “You don’t have any suggestions for improvements?” Geary asked as he took his seat and called up his own display showing the situation in this star system.
    “Nope. This is one of those times when unedited words from the heart are best.”
    “Then please transmit it to the fleet, Captain.”
    “Certainly, Admiral.”
    “Anything new from CEO Boyens today?”
    She made a gesture of indifference. “Just another complaint about provocative maneuvers on our part. He seems to feel threatened by the fact that you’ve moved so many warships to an orbit only ten light-minutes from the hypernet gate.”
    “And only eight light-minutes from his flotilla,” Geary said. “Did we send him the standard response that the authorities at Midway have given us freedom to maneuver within this star system?”
    “You’d have to ask our emissaries,” Desjani said, now disdainful.
    “I will,” Geary said. His annoyance with Boyens had been growing, as the Syndic CEO had sent repeated messages supposedly about negotiations but mainly containing thinly veiled derision of Geary’s inability to budge him from this star system.
    But while the Syndic flotilla had stubbornly held its position near the hypernet gate, the Alliance presence near that gate had grown to include seven battleships and eleven battle cruisers, along with dozens of heavy and light cruisers and eighty destroyers. Few of those warships were in perfect condition, but all of them had the propulsion, shielding, and weapons if necessary to go on the attack. Geary had designated them Formation Alpha and arranged them into a single, giant fist aimed toward Boyens’s Syndic flotilla.
    As the Alliance warships took up position, Kommodor Marphissa had taken the remaining warships of the Midway flotilla out and around, forming a small pocket of defense that still blocked any movement by the Syndic flotilla toward the star and also further limited possible movement by the Syndics by threatening their route toward the nearest jump point.
    “He’s got to know what we’re doing,” Desjani commented, her posture and tone of voice now that of someone who did not expect anything to happen today that hadn’t happened yesterday and the day before. “Boyens isn’t stupid, even