Dauntless cleared the top of the mines, too, pivoting downward, the force of her acceleration obvious even though the inertial dampers were whining as they tried to block out the effects on the ship and crew. When it came to closing on the enemy, Desjani didn’t waste time. “The Syndic guard force must have seen us by now,” Desjani observed. “Since we’re accelerating toward them, we’ll see their reaction in . . . twenty or twenty-five minutes, depending on what they do in the meantime.”
After the frantic activity they’d just gone through, those twenty minutes crawled by like a video playing in slow motion. At least the delay gave Geary time to go through the status reports streaming in from his ships, his first chance for a good look at their supply states and repair progress since the fleet had hastily jumped back for Lakota.
In the last fight at Lakota, Warrior had taken the brunt of fire from four Syndic battleships blundering past the Alliance auxiliaries that Warrior had been ordered to protect. Her crew had worked themselves to exhaustion patching up serious damage sustained at Vidha, so that the battleship could once again face the enemy, but now Warrior was once again barely combat-capable. Geary couldn’t help shaking his head grimly as he viewed the latest status of the stricken battleship. She could keep up with the fleet, but Warrior would be out of the line of battle again for a long time.
The battleships Orion and Majestic, also badly damaged at Vidha, hadn’t done nearly as inspired a job of fixing themselves up since then and remained barely combat-capable even though they’d taken little more injury the first time the fleet had been at Lakota. Amazon, Indomitable, Vengeance , and Reprisal were the next most badly damaged battleships, but all had made heroic repair efforts in the time allowed by the jumps away from and back to Lakota and were in good enough shape for combat.
The battle cruisers, which traded greater acceleration and maneuverability for the heavier armor and shields of the battleships, had paid the usual price for the bargain. Most of them had taken significant damage as the fleet had fought its way out of Lakota, but like Dauntless, most had been able to get at least the majority of their hell lances back online and their propulsion units functional. Only Daring and Formidable were still in bad enough shape that they needed to be kept back from any major fighting. Geary hoped he could manage to keep the commanding officers of those ships from nonetheless charging into the biggest fight they could find.
The rest of the fleet, the heavy and light cruisers and the many destroyers, were much the same though there hadn’t been many badly damaged destroyers or light cruisers when they jumped out of Lakota with the Syndics on their heels. If the smaller combatants took major hits, they didn’t have the size or armor to withstand the resultant damage and were usually blown apart or knocked completely out of action. Only Geary’s attempts to protect his light combatants during the last battle had kept them from being decimated. As it was, four destroyers and three light cruisers hadn’t survived the fleet’s last visit to Lakota.
The four auxiliaries, vital to the fleet’s survival, had emerged from the last encounter almost untouched, thanks in great part to Warrior’s stout defense. The one hit that Titan had taken had been patched up in the days since the battle.
As long as he didn’t pay attention to the total lack of specter missiles among his ships, the almost exhausted supplies of grapeshot and the low fuel-cell states, the surviving ships of the fleet actually appeared to be in decent shape.
“Why haven’t the Syndics done more repairs?” Geary wondered out loud. “They’ve had as long as we have, but their ships are still showing a lot of unfixed damage.”
Desjani gave him a surprised look. “From what I know, they don’t maintain the same onboard repair capability. It’s more centralized with them. Supposed to be more efficient, I guess, and allows smaller crews on their warships. Odds are very little work was done before those repair ships showed up, and it would have taken them a while to be summoned after the battle even if they were in a nearby star system. They’re close enough to where the last engagements were fought with us that I bet that formation has only been under way for a day or so.”
“The Syndics were more like us before the war,” Geary noted. “I guess they changed in response to their own losses. But what you’re describing is something designed for peacetime, when there’s the luxury of time and the ability to wait until you get to a repair facility or it comes to you. That may save the Syndics money in the short term, but it can’t be helping their sustained combat capability in the long run.”
She grinned. “Not today, for sure.” Desjani paused as she noticed something. “We’ve got light from the Syndic guard force’s reaction.”
He hastily switched displays, seeing the images of two battleships on vectors accelerating toward the Alliance fleet. “Just two battleships? What about the rest?”
“We don’t have light on their reactions, yet.” Desjani checked something. “The two battleships are only twenty-two light-minutes away now since they’re coming at us. When the rest of the force reacts, we should see it in the next few minutes. ”
It took a couple of minutes longer than expected, leading Desjani to predict that the rest of the guard force was accelerating away from the Alliance fleet. She turned out to be right. “They’ve split up.”
“Split up?” As Geary watched the display, sensors throughout the fleet observed the time-delayed light showing the actions of the Syndic ships and provided rapid updates and estimates. Two of the battleships, both battle cruisers and the lighter Syndic warships, were accelerating like bats out of hell, on vectors clearly aimed at the hypernet gate. They were still twenty-eight light-minutes away and pushing their velocity up past point one light. Even though some of the lightly damaged warships in the guard flotilla were lagging slightly, it wasn’t by much. He didn’t need to run the figures to know the Alliance fleet couldn’t possibly catch them. “They’re going to defend and if necessary collapse that hypernet gate so we can’t use it. But why split up a force that’s already badly outnumbered? Why send those other two battleships toward us? Is it some sort of diversion?” He ran out the vectors for the two battleships, and the answer became obvious. The two battleships were headed for the large formation of damaged Syndic warships and repair ships.
“Going to defend their comrades,” Desjani replied matter-of-factly. “It’s a hopeless gesture, but that Syndic commander is making it.”
Two battleships. Even counting out the badly damaged Alliance battleships like Warrior, he still had at least sixteen battleships to hurl against them, plus over a dozen battle cruisers. “It’s what battleships do,” Geary stated softly, remembering the words of Captain Mosko before he took Defiant, Audacious, and Indefatigable to their deaths holding off the Syndics closing on the rest of the Alliance fleet. “But this is hopeless. The other ships can’t get away no matter what those two battleships do. The battleships can’t even get to us until over four hours after we intercept that formation. They’re being thrown away for no reason.”
“Maybe the Syndic commander has orders to defend those other ships and the hypernet gate, too, and has to make the gesture.”
That sounded entirely too likely to be true. A mission too great for the forces assigned, and so some of those forces would be sacrificed to satisfy the unreasonable expectations of the high command. In Geary’s time a century earlier those sorts of things had only happened in exercises, fake losses in fake battles, but even then he’d wondered if things would truly be different in a real conflict as he was assured by his seniors, or if the same patterns would play out even though the costs were far higher. From what he’d learned of the war, and seen of it in person, too often the latter was true. “All right, Captain Desjani, let’s make sure our fleet will be properly arrayed to take out those battleships without losing any of our own ships.”
“Captain Desjani,” the engineering watch-stander called. “Dauntless just went below fifty percent on fuel cell reserves. ”
Desjan
i nodded, then glanced at Geary. “The old girl’s never been this low before.”
The “old girl” had left her commissioning dock less than two years ago, but it was still a chilling thing to hear. If they didn’t manage to loot those Syndic repair ships, the Alliance fleet wouldn’t get much farther home. Warships couldn’t run on prayers.
Forty minutes since they’d arrived in Lakota again. So far things looked very good. But how much longer would they have before the massive Syndic pursuit force came in behind them, determined to ensure that the Alliance fleet didn’t escape again?
TWO
POURING over the top of the Syndic minefield, the jumbled warships of the Alliance fleet had accelerated onto individual vectors. For a moment, the sight of it had brought to Geary’s mind the chaotic arrival in Corvus right after he’d assumed command, the Alliance fleet breaking into a wild scramble to attack a few weak Syndic warships. But this time was far different. This time the Alliance warships were following orders, tearing off on courses and speeds that would bring coordinated attacks to bear on every Syndic warship the fleet could reach. Even those officers who didn’t like the way Geary fought shouldn’t have any problems here, with so many targets available for the ships of the Alliance fleet.
With the orders given, the fleet reacting as it should, and no Syndic pursuit force yet showing up astern, Geary had one of those lulls created by the vast distances of a star system. Even with his ships accelerating to point one light speed, it would take more than an hour and a half just to cover the ten light-minutes separating the fleet from that big Syndic formation of damaged warships and repair ships. But the Syndics were also moving away from the Alliance ships, though unable to do so nearly as fast the Alliance fleet was charging at them.
“Estimated time to intercept one point seven hours,” Desjani grumbled. “They’re running, but we’ll still be on them well before those two Syndic battleships can reach us.”
“We’ll have to make sure those battleships are stopped dead before they can smash their way through to any of our auxiliaries.” On Geary’s display, paths arced through space as Alliance destroyers and light cruisers pulled ahead of the heavier combatants, aiming not only for the largest Syndic formation but also smaller groups and individual ships. “Call it two more hours before we take those Syndic ships. We’ll be lucky if we achieve that before the Syndic pursuit comes in behind us.”
“Do you suppose any more Syndic reinforcements showed up here after we left?” Desjani wondered.
“Good question. We can’t assume the totals we saw at Lakota last time we were here reflect what the Syndics have available now and in the pursuit force. But it looks like what’s here is going to fight.” Geary watched some of the damaged warships that had been proceeding independently toward the inner planets alter their vectors to come around and head toward individual rendezvous with the two battleships, trying to build a scratch task force. Counting up the ships involved, and their states of repair, Geary shook his head. He knew how they were feeling, badly outnumbered and not prepared for this kind of battle. His own fleet had faced a similar situation when it had last been at Lakota.
Out of the almost eighty Syndic battleships and battle cruisers the Alliance fleet had once faced at Lakota, at least six Syndic battleships and ten Syndic battle cruisers had been destroyed during those battles. Alliance sensors had also been able to confirm twenty Syndic heavy cruisers destroyed then, as well as dozens of light cruisers and Hunter-Killers. But numerous Syndic warships had been badly damaged as well, some of them by Audacious, Indefatigable, and Defiant as they fought to the last. Those damaged Syndic ships had been left behind here when the Syndic commander took a strike force in pursuit of the fleeing Alliance fleet.
The large formation of crippled Syndic ships included four battleships and no less than seven battle cruisers as well as thirteen heavy cruisers. Trying to close with that formation of badly hurt warships right now in addition to the two combat-effective battleships from the guard force were one more battleship, two battle cruisers, and another three heavy cruisers, all of which had suffered significant damage. Scattered around them were about a dozen light cruisers and HuKs, which had been limping for repair docks, and some of those were also trying to join in the defense of their helpless fellows.
He ran out the course vectors and the times. If all of those ships managed to join together, it would create a weak but dangerous flotilla. But with the distances involved and the propulsion damage so many had suffered, the Syndic defenders could only arrive in staggered waves of a few ships at a time unless they pulled back and tried to form up farther away from the Alliance fleet, at the cost of letting the Alliance ships tear apart the big formation unhindered. That would buy the Syndics a little time, but not enough to save them unless the pursuit force came through that jump point a lot sooner than Geary hoped.
A pair of tugs had been dragging a riddled Syndic heavy cruiser only three light-minutes from the jump point. The unlucky heavy cruiser must have been forced to wait the longest for a tow to show up. Now, with no hope of running away from the Alliance destroyers and light cruisers heading for them, the crews of the tugs abandoned ship, escape pods spitting frantically from the slow, clumsy vessels. Several escape pods erupted from the heavy cruiser itself as well, marking the flight of the salvage crew left aboard the ship.
The Alliance destroyers Jinto and Herebra reached the tugs first and blew them into fragments with close-in hell-lance fire before altering course to head for their next targets. Right behind them, Contus, Savik, and the light cruisers Tierce, Ward, and Lunge rolled past above and to port of the abandoned heavy cruiser, hell lances slamming repeatedly into the hulk until it shattered into multiple fragments. “Let’s see them recover that,” Geary remarked.
“There goes another one,” Desjani noted gleefully, as a solitary Syndic light cruiser whose remaining crew had also abandoned ship came apart under the fire of a half dozen Alliance destroyers.
Struck by a sudden thought, Geary sent out orders. “Ocrea, pick up some of the escape pods from that Syndic heavy cruiser. I want to know what the crew members from that ship can tell us about how long it took the pursuit force to jump after us and anything else they can tell us about the pursuit force.” One of his own heavy cruisers, Ocrea wouldn’t have interrogation facilities anything like those on Dauntless, but he didn’t have the luxury of the time to get those prisoners to a capital ship for questioning. Hopefully some of the Syndic crew members would spill their guts after the shock of having the Alliance fleet reappear and destroy their ship.
It was also time to update the maneuvering plan based on what the Syndics were doing. The Syndic defensive moves had actually simplified the Alliance requirements. As Syndic warships came together, Alliance ships that had been dispersed to hit each one individually could also merge into larger formations. Geary frowned at the display, where the enemy flotilla filled with damaged warships had been tagged with the name Casualty Flotilla. The tactical systems automatically named enemy formations, so he was surprised that one had a specific status designator rather than a generic name like “Flotilla Alpha.” It was always a little unnerving to him when automated support systems acted a bit too human.
He wasn’t trying anything fancy that would require a lot of maneuvering. The subformations would be concentrated into loose, larger formations, which would sweep directly over the largest Syndic formation, the Casualty Flotilla, then onward to hit the less-badly damaged warships trying to form into their own flotilla, then soon afterward the two battleships racing outward from the guard force. “How’s this look to you?” he asked Desjani.
She studied it, face intent. “A series of fast firing runs over the Casualty Flotilla to knock out the weapons on the Syndic warships that have any working? You don’t want to destroy them right away?”
“Not until our auxiliaries are done looting their repair ships. I don’t want to risk debris from destroyed warships messing up our pillaging
operation. We can finish off everything when we pull away from the Casualty Flotilla. We’ll have four of our battleships with the auxiliaries then.”
Desjani nodded. “Even the Third Battleship Division should be able to handle destroying enemy ships with all of their systems knocked out. But you need to leave a couple of more battleships or battle cruisers with the formation containing the auxiliaries.”
“Why? I know Warrior has been beat to hell again, but Orion and Majestic can put up a fight and Conqueror is in good shape. I’m sticking Conqueror with them since she’s part of the same battleship division. Those four battleships should be able to handle anything that manages to get through the rest of the fleet.”
Desjani kept her expression controlled and her voice bland. “That’s true, if Orion, Majestic, and Conqueror do not have difficulties engaging the enemy.”
Meaning that their commanding officers might find reasons to avoid battle. He had to admit that Desjani’s diplomatically worded statement was justified. Captain Casia of Conqueror hadn’t inspired any confidence. Commander Yin, acting commander of Orion since Captain Numos had been relieved of command and placed under arrest, made Casia look like a paragon of a combat officer by comparison. And Majestic’s acting commander, who had also gotten his job when his former captain (Numos’s ally Captain Faresa) had been relieved for cause, was such a nonentity that Geary had trouble remembering the man’s face. In a perfect world he would have replaced all of them by now, but a fleet fleeing for its life through enemy territory was far from a perfect world, especially when the fleet’s politics left Geary’s hold on command tenuous enough that he couldn’t afford to be seen acting too high-handedly. Some officers might work against him more vigorously as a result, and other officers would believe such behavior meant Geary was on his way to accepting the role of the dictator they either hoped or feared he would become.