Dreadnaught

Smythe scratched his neck meditatively. “None of them will be in mint condition, but give me three more days, and all of their weapons will be working again, holes in their hulls patched, and shields back up to strength.”

Desjani was running some calculations. “A bombardment launched from here will take sixty-one hours to reach the planet where the enigma towns are.”

“All right,” Geary said. “We’ll launch the bombardment within the hour, along with our message that this is just a taste of what pissed-off humanity can do. That will give the aliens plenty of time to respond with something other than more attacks, if they so choose, and give us time to see the bombardment hit and evaluate the results before repairs are far enough along, and we jump for Laka.”

Most of the officers left quickly when the conference ended, but Smythe lingered long enough to shake his head at Desjani. “I go to all that trouble to get your ship’s systems upgraded, and you go and get a good lot of the equipment blown apart before the work’s completely done.”

“I’m just trying to keep your engineers gainfully employed,” Desjani replied, managing the first trace of a smile she had shown since losing her crew members.

“I appreciate your efforts, but I wanted the admiral to know that one of the hell-lance batteries on Victorious wasn’t knocked out by enemy action. Not directly, anyway. One of the power junctions feeding it failed.”

“Age?” Geary asked.

“Age and stress,” Smythe confirmed. “I can’t teach our equipment meditation, so I’ll keep working at making it younger.”

Charban sat staring down at the table after Smythe had vanished. “If they’d only talk to us. This is senseless. War always seems senseless, but we don’t even know why they’re hostile. Don’t think I don’t appreciate exactly how your Captain Vitali feels. I lost a lot of troops in my time.”

He stood up and walked out, something in his movements and his bearing making Charban seem older.

Desjani glanced at Rione, who was still seated, and stood up herself. “I’ll get a bombardment plan set up. Admiral.”

“Thanks. Target about half the towns on the planet.”

“Half?” She smiled again, this time in a feral way. “I thought you’d limit me to a quarter.”

After Desjani left, Geary sat waiting for Rione to say something. Finally, she looked directly at him. “I realize that the words ‘it could have been worse’ are cold comfort at such times,” Rione said. “But they are also true. You could have been mourning the loss of several ships, and thousands of dead.”

“I know.” Geary leaned back, trying to dull the pain inside as he thought of their losses. “If we hadn’t reacted as quickly as we did, we could easily have had most of the auxiliaries crippled or destroyed, which could have left this fleet in a very bad position. Was that the idea, Madam Emissary?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do. I wish I had some idea of why you would have agreed to play a role in it.”

“You know that I have always been willing to sacrifice myself for the right reasons.” On that, she also stood and left.

FOUR hours later, Geary stood at attention in his best uniform. Beside him stood Captain Desjani, similarly attired, also at attention. Next to them were two ranks of sailors and Marines from Dauntless’s crew, forming two lines just outside a hatch. From the hatch, giving access to the exterior, a pressurized accommodation tube led to Typhoon. Everyone wore armbands showing a wide bar of gold, another of black, then a final gold bar, symbolizing the night that was only an interval between the light.

Geary brought his arm up in a salute that he held as the first of twenty-nine sealed body tubes was carried past by more crew members, moving at a somber pace, each step coming with slow deliberation. More followed, carrying the rest of the tubes. Moving down the corridor formed by the two ranks of sailors and Marines, the crew members carried the remains of their comrades through the hatch and toward Typhoon, where they would be kept in compartments designed for that sad burden.

Normally, cargo was simply floated through the open space between ships. But the fleet didn’t treat its dead that way.

After the last tube passed by on its way to Typhoon and had vanished from view, Geary finally lowered his arm. Desjani did the same, turning to the honor guard. “Thank you. Dismissed.”

Everyone left to change back into a regular uniform, to return to the work whose demands never ceased, but sometimes paused when tradition demanded it.