Dreadnaught

“Then why aren’t we going by Dunai on our way home?” she asked. “The supplies we use during that extra travel time may be needed once we’re inside alien space, and it would make a lot more sense to pick up those POWs on our way home than it would to have them aboard our ships when we’re entering alien space.”

“You’re right. But there’s no time to appeal the order, not without delaying our departure for weeks, and how can I do that when the side trip to Dunai is an annoyance but not a critical issue? I can’t refuse that order. It’s operational, it’s fully within the rights of headquarters to mandate that, it’s not unduly dangerous or risky to our knowledge, and it doesn’t significantly compromise our assigned mission. It’s not like the court-martial issue.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tanya, there may be good reasons for us to go to Dunai. You don’t have to like it . . . I don’t like it . . . but please respect that I have to accept the authority of those over me when it is legitimately employed.”

“I do.” She smiled apologetically. “You’re already under plenty of pressure. I know how unhappy the warships from the federation and republic are. Believe me, if anybody but you was commanding this fleet, they’d probably mutiny and sail for home on their own accord. At least you can blame that witch for it since the orders came with her.” Rione’s stock with the fleet, never high, had sunk to lows approaching absolute zero. “Our own crews aren’t thrilled, but they trust you to bring them home.”

“I know.” That pressure never abated, the confidence of these men and women that he would treat their lives as the valuable-beyond-measure things they were. But he knew that he would be ordering those same men and women into situations where they might well die, that some of them would very likely not come home.

“I’m sorry. But there’s something else you need to know about. I’m actually on edge because of another thing. It has nothing to do with politicians. I think. But it’s odd. Dauntless lost another power distribution junction today.”

“You mean it’s too far gone to repair?” he asked, wondering why she was bringing that up. Junctions failed sometimes. The failures were pretty rare, but nothing worked forever.

“It’s completely burned-out. There’s not even anything left worth salvaging.” She stopped walking and turned to face him, her eyes fixed on Geary. “I don’t normally bother you with materiel problems. Keeping Dauntless going is my job, not yours. But Dauntless had three power distribution junctions fail while I was gone. That is, two failed inspection, and a third was so shaky that my executive officer wisely chose to have it powered down as well. Fortunately, Varandal could manufacture replacements, but now we’ve lost another.”

Geary looked away, trying to think. “Four junctions? In a few months? That’s a very high failure rate for a ship that hasn’t suffered battle damage during that period. I can’t recall hearing about anything like that a century ago.”

“Ships were probably built differently a century ago,” Desjani observed, “and didn’t have to deal with the combat these ships have seen. But Dauntless hasn’t had a problem like this in the past. I told my people to find out what was causing these failures, but all the engineers aboard Dauntless and on the auxiliaries can tell me is that the junctions suffered ‘serious component malfunction significantly impacting operating parameters.’ Which is how engineers say ‘it broke.’ ”

“That many equipment failures and no indication why?” He frowned down at the deck, then gestured to her. “Come on. Let’s look into this.” He led the way back to his stateroom, waving Desjani to one chair, then seating himself. Geary called up the fleet database, then narrowed the information display to junction distribution failures within the last several months. A tremendous number of tags related to battle damage popped up, so he narrowed the search to the last two months. “Dauntless isn’t the only ship that has had that problem. Warspite has lost five, Amazon three, Leviathan four . . .” Frowning, he told the system to identify common aspects for the warships with the failures, then stared at the answer. “The oldest ships in the fleet. Including Dauntless.”

“Dauntless was launched nearly three years ago,” Desjani said. “There aren’t a lot of ships that survived that long during the war,” she added proudly.

“Warspite is actually older than three years by a couple of months.” Geary called up his comm screen. “I need to talk to Captain Smythe about this.”

The fleet had gathered its units closer together as the time for departure from Varandal approached, so Tanuki and the other auxiliaries were only a few light seconds distant. Captain Smythe’s image appeared in Geary’s stateroom with only a small delay. Smythe saluted in his usual slightly sloppy fashion, his customary cheerfulness not evident. “Yes, Admiral?”