Dreadnaught

“Yes, they do. But as fleet commander, I have the discretion of responding to the situation if it requires modifying my instructions.” Geary, feeling increasingly aggravated with Rione since she hadn’t bent at all despite his forbearance with Paol Benan’s actions, kept his speech formal. “I won’t keep charging toward the galactic core as long as the enigma race and my fuel supplies hold out. We’ll reach a point where our fuel cell supply, even as augmented by new cells built by the auxiliaries, will begin declining past ninety percent. At that point, we’re heading back. I hope,” he added to see what reaction it produced, “that the grand council wouldn’t expect me to hazard this fleet by complying blindly with orders given many light years from here.”

“Senator Navarro certainly wouldn’t,” she said, neither her tone nor her expression providing any clue to anything but the literal meaning of the statement.

“I know we’ve had some sharp words,” Geary said, looking at General Charban as well now, “but I want to be certain you both understand that I consider us to be on the same side.”

“Of course we are,” Charban agreed.

Rione simply looked back at him.

THREE hours later, Geary gave the order for the fleet’s ships to pivot around and accelerate all out toward the jump point for Alihi.

ELEVEN

ELEVEN hours to the jump for Alihi. An hour after the fleet had leaped toward that jump point, the nearest alien warships suddenly swung about and raced to match the movement of the Alliance fleet.

“Captain Smythe, you need to coax more acceleration out of your auxiliaries,” Geary ordered.

“Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Three bags full!” As Smythe ended his words, he saluted in a grand manner. “Request permission to jettison twenty metric tons of raw material from Tanuki, Kupua, Titan, and Domovoi.”

“Twenty metric tons?” By any measure, that was a lot.

“From each ship. Eighty tons total. It’s the sort of thing we can most easily find along the way, like raw iron. We can just rope an asteroid or two in another star system if you want us to break it down into usable form without slowing. But I can’t get any more acceleration out of my heaviest ships without lightening their mass.”

It didn’t leave him much choice. The acceleration rates for the four big auxiliaries weren’t fast enough, and if they were destroyed here, then those tons of raw materials wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Permission granted.”

“Do you want us to throw it at anything or anyone when we jettison it?” Smythe asked. “It could make quite a splash whenever it landed.”

“No. Just drop it in a safe orbit. We’re supposed to be trying to establish peaceful relations with the enigmas, and dropping eighty tons of raw metal on them probably wouldn’t further that goal.”

As Smythe’s image vanished, Desjani spoke in a low voice as if commenting on the weather. “You need to get some rest, Admiral.”

“While we’re facing the prospect of getting annihilated by that hypernet gate?”

“Yes. There’s nothing else we can do for a while, and you can monitor the fleet’s progress from your stateroom just as well as you can from here.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “You look nervous.”

He was nervous, but he got the point. Everyone else on Dauntless would be watching him to see if he was calm or worried.

Geary stood up, moving casually. “I’m going down to my stateroom to eat something,” he told Desjani in a louder voice that carried easily across the bridge.

“What a good idea, Admiral,” she said. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

But he had barely made it down to his stateroom and checked the progress of Smythe’s auxiliaries when a call came in.

General Carabali made an apologetic grimace. “Sorry to bother you, Admiral, but I feel I should inform you that Admiral Chelak has been confined to his quarters aboard Haboob.”

“What did Chelak do?”

“He tried to pull rank on me and assume command of the Marine detachment aboard Haboob. Not too smart, really, since that’s two hundred Marines he would have had to convince to disregard my authority.”

Geary sighed. “Thank you for informing me.”

“It’s going to get worse, Admiral. They’re sitting on Haboob and Mistral with very little to do, and they’re the kind of people who are used to doing things and giving orders. I believe the only reason we haven’t had more trouble before now is that all of the former prisoners are still under the influence of long incarcerations in the Syndic labor camp, and some of them are also under the influence of truly impressive doses of medications prescribed by the fleet physicians.”