The Lost Fleet: Courageous

It took the Syndics a very short while to figure out that the Marines were withdrawing; then scattered figures began pouring out of the exits from the mine shafts. But the nearest Alliance Marines were still within three hundred meters. Geary crossed his fingers, but both scout battleships held their fire as the Syndics moved in pursuit of the slowly withdrawing Marines.

At this rate the Marines would never get three hundred meters from the enemy.

But maybe that wouldn’t matter. Exemplar and then Braveheart opened fire, their hell lances dancing across the area near the mine shaft exits, the charged-particle spears slashing through metal, rock, and human bodies. Geary stared as symbols marking Syndics simply vanished in quick succession as hell lances scored direct hits on the individual enemies and vaporized them as well as everything else in the immediate area.

The Syndics closest to the Marines were still within three hundred meters, but their movement halted as they saw the havoc being wreaked behind them. A natural reaction, and exactly the wrong one. The Marines kept withdrawing, the nearest enemies fell outside the three hundred meter no-fire zone, and the hell lances blew the Syndic defenders to atoms.

No more enemy shapes could be seen on the surface by the fleet’s sensors. It was possible a few members of the Syndic pursuit force had survived, hidden under the wreckage of the facility as Exemplar and Braveheart enthusiastically pounded it into scrap. But it didn’t matter, since nothing moved in the firing zone now but structures collapsing and debris flying away from the sites of hits.

Safely separated from the devastation, the shuttles carrying the cows lifted from the surface. Around them, the last Marines were falling back by sections into their own shuttles. As Geary watched, the Marine shuttles leaped into space behind the heavy-lift shuttles loaded with the cows, escorting the trace elements needed back to Titan, from which they could be distributed to the other auxiliaries.

Another two minutes and Geary would have had to slow the fleet down to allow the shuttles to catch up. But the shuttles could still manage an intercept now.

He let out a long breath. One more crisis surmounted.

I wonder what the next one will be.

“CONGRATULATIONS to everyone who helped make the last operation a success.” Geary nodded toward Colonel Carabali, Captain Tyrosian, and Commander Lommand, and the commanding officers of Exemplar and Braveheart. “Captain Tyrosian informs me that the necessary trace elements are being distributed among the four auxiliaries as we speak. Expendable weapons and fuel cells the auxiliaries have already manufactured have been delivered to warships. As soon as the final deliveries have been made and the shuttles recovered, we’ll head for the jump point out of Baldur.”

Not everyone seemed to share Geary’s sentiments about Tyrosian and Lommand. Captain Casia from Conqueror and Commander Yin from Orion smiled approvingly at the commanding officers of the scout battleships but bent lowered brows toward the two engineering officers. Geary took a moment to scan down the very long virtual table, trying to gauge how many other commanding officers were following the lead of Casia and Yin. There didn’t seem to be many, but it wasn’t easy to tell, and Geary suspected his most dangerous opponents within the fleet wouldn’t be as obvious about their hostility as Casia and Yin.

Still, it was both aggravating and important to know that those who disapproved of Geary’s command of the fleet were trying to use the engineers as a wedge issue with the other ship commanders.

“Captain Geary,” a new voice spoke up. It took Geary a moment to realize who it was, aided by the meeting software, which helpfully highlighted a name not far down the table. Captain Badaya of the Illustrious. He was also commander of what was left of the Sixth Battle Cruiser Division, which now consisted only of Illustrious and Incredible. “Captain Geary,” Badaya repeated slowly, as if still thinking through his words, “before we discuss other matters, there’s something I wanted to bring up. We face major difficulties to get back to Alliance space and can’t spend much time considering means of harming the Syndics where it will hurt them the most. The sort of thing we did at Sancere. I’ve been thinking about what happened at Sancere.”

That could mean many things, and Badaya didn’t seem to be challenging his authority, so Geary just nodded to acknowledge the statement and waited.

“The hypernet gate at Sancere,” Badaya suggested. “When it collapsed, there was an energy pulse that strained the shields of our ships. I understand that the actions of Dauntless, Daring, and Diamond prevented the pulse from being even worse.” He paused.