The Lost Fleet: Courageous

It physically hurt to watch the three battleships being pounded by increasingly overwhelming numbers of Syndic warships, but they were accomplishing their mission. The leading elements of the Syndic flotilla were slowed, hurt, or evading, and the Alliance fleet was within reach of the jump point. They’d bought the time they needed at the price of three battleships and their crews.

The Alliance fleet came at the jump point from slightly above and to one side, about to clear the Syndic minefield. “All units, reduce speed to point four light and follow Dauntless’s movements,” Geary ordered. With every second critical, he didn’t want to order exact courses now or worry about every unit maintaining its precise location in the formation.

Dauntless had pivoted around, her bow to the enemy now, and her main propulsion units kicking in again to force her velocity down. All around her, the other ships in the fleet were doing the same with varying degrees of quickness depending on the state of their propulsion units.

And the displays updated as the Syndics kept coming, getting past the reeling ships of the Seventh Battleship Division, closing faster now that the Alliance warships had been forced to slow down.

Desjani was watching the display intently as Dauntless crested the estimated top of the Syndic minefield to one side of the jump point. “Alter course down one eight zero degrees, port zero five degrees, now,” she ordered.

Dauntless swung over and down, as if diving toward the jump point, the rest of the Alliance warships following suit in a wave.

The Syndic force that they had last seen at Ixion, built around four battleships and four battle cruisers, chose that exact moment to flash into existence and make an automated turn up, the arriving Syndics and the fleeing Alliance forces right on top of each other in an instant’s time.

The only thing that prevented last-minute disaster was that the Syndics hadn’t been expecting to encounter an enemy force literally the moment they arrived at Lakota. In the few seconds required for the Syndic crews to recognize what was happening, then activate and give firing approval to their weapons, the frantic Alliance warships surrounding them unleashed a firestorm of hell lances that wiped out the lighter units and ripped open three of the four battle cruisers.

But the four battleships blundered onward, shields shredding under the Alliance fire but now shooting back desperately as the heavy enemy warships headed straight for the four auxiliaries. With only seconds before contact, Titan, Witch, Jinn, and Goblin didn’t have time to evade.

But Warrior, Orion, and Majestic were still there, still hanging as close to the auxiliaries as they could. Orion seemed to shy away in the moments before contact, and Majestic was slightly to one side, but Warrior was right between the auxiliaries and the Syndic battleships. She held her ground, pouring hell-lance fire from her working batteries into the enemy warships while the four Syndic battleships pounded back at the single Alliance battleship.

If the fight had lasted for more than seconds, Warrior would have been doomed, but the Syndic battleships veered away in panicked flight, two of them riddled by Alliance fire and barely operational. Warrior, torn up anew by Syndic fire, doggedly kept up as the auxiliaries fled toward the jump point with the rest of the fleet.

In a matter of moments the Alliance fleet had met the arriving Syndic force, decimated it, then passed onward, taking more damage itself and leaving the shocked Syndic survivors in their wake.

There wasn’t much left of the Seventh Battleship Division. The Syndic battleships had caught up with it and were now methodically smashing Audacious, Defiant, and Indefatigable. Indefatigable only had a single hell-lance battery still firing. Audacious was silent, a ball of wreckage falling off to one side. Defiant took several broadsides almost simultaneously and blew apart as two massive explosions erupted amidships and near the stern.

“Captain Geary? Captain Geary! The fleet is at the jump point!”

He tore his eyes from the final moments of Defiant, trying not to notice the debris of battle that seemed to fill the universe, the Syndic missiles reaching for the trailing ships in the Alliance fleet, the crippled Alliance warships straining to keep up with their fellows, the broken wrecks of the Syndic warships that had run head-on into the Alliance fleet at the jump point tumbling away. “All units. Jump now.”