The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

Geary went back to his stateroom after that. He felt weary. Thinking about his grandniece and very-probably-dead grandnephew, the descendants of his own brother, who had aged and died long ago, had brought to the fore memories of that brother. The weight of the past had come down upon him again, and he could no longer smile, thinking of those who had died while he was in survival sleep for a century. Fortunately, there was always much to be done, and he could seek a small form of oblivion in the mass of work.

Once back in his stateroom, Geary paged through the multitude of messages in his queue. The fleet commander received hundreds a day, only a few dealing with major factors requiring decisions from him. But to make those big decisions he needed to know a lot of little things, so many other bits of information and reports were either forwarded to him or just passed on for background. Geary skimmed through message headers, sometimes pausing to also skim through the underlying material, only occasionally pausing to read through something of particular import.

The uncrewed probes sent to the wreckage of the alien ships to find traces of their former crews had also collected pieces of the wreckage. The report forwarded by Captain Smythe summarized what had been learned from those so far, which, unfortunately, wasn’t much. Unsurprising mix of alloys and composites . . . structural analysis of alloys reveals some intriguing signs of unusual casting techniques . . . composites tilted more heavily toward silicon than carbon, suggesting relative abundance of those elements on alien home world . . . no portions of equipment found large enough to provide critical information as to functions or design.

Captain Tulev had reported on everything collected at the site of the battle. At least they didn’t have to worry too much about the aliens’ analyzing any human wreckage or remains. Whatever the aliens might find after Tulev’s cleanup effort would provide a lot fewer clues than the aliens’ own wreckage had provided to humans.

Geary’s eye caught on a disciplinary summary from Dragon. A petty officer caught selling drugs synthesized from stolen medical supplies. Six cases of insubordination, and three fights, one of them involving several sailors. Was Captain Bradamont having trouble controlling her crew?

He told the system to summarize all disciplinary reports and give averages for each ship type. Dragon, it turned out, was a bit better than average. Even Dauntless had seen a significant uptick in incidents.

Geary sat looking at the numbers, knowing what they meant. Fights. Insubordination. Failure to carry out duties. All signs of trouble, and they were getting worse. Sailors who were unhappy but had nothing specific to vent their unhappiness on, so they were turning on each other, letting minor events escalate to levels where official action had to be taken. All of it was still minor. Nothing was at a critical stage yet, but he had to try to keep things from getting that bad.

Which meant getting home.

He finally fell asleep in his chair for a couple of hours, waking with a jerk to see before him a message summarizing fleet junior officer qualification progress. Small wonder that had put him to sleep.

A quick shift to the star display revealed that nothing much had changed in the star system. The human fleet and the alien armada had moved a bit closer to each other, slowly converging, and this fleet had also gotten a bit closer to the orbital fortress guarding the next jump point; but that was all.

Shutting off the display, Geary checked his appearance, pondered appearing on the bridge looking like he had just come in from a wild night of liberty, thought about what Tanya would do if he did that, then took enough time to clean himself up and put on a fresh uniform.

Desjani was on the bridge, looking immaculate in her uniform even though her face displayed signs of fatigue. She yawned as she waved Geary to his command seat. “Did you get some rest, Admiral?”

“A little.”

“Good. In exchange for your display of good judgment, I’ve got something to show you, Admiral.”

He sat down, eyeing her. “A workable plan?”

“A workable plan? No, Admiral. I’m going to show you a great plan.” She entered the commands, and Geary’s display came to life.

He watched the maneuvers play out, running the simulation to its end, then let out a long breath. “It works.”

“It could work,” she corrected him. “If the bear-cows do what we think they will. If they don’t, we can pull out of contact and try something else.” Desjani frowned at her display. “We can probably do that.”