The Lost Fleet: Courageous

Victoria Rione answered from her position in the observer’s chair, once again watching and listening to what happened on Dauntless’s bridge. “It could have been politics. In the Alliance, many more planets wanted hypernet gates than there were funds to construct them, and past a certain point, the practical differences between worlds were very minor. Then it became a question of whose politicians could outmaneuver the others.”

Desjani, her face turned away from Rione but visible to Geary, rolled her eyes in silent commentary on politicians. Geary managed to keep a straight face, nodding in such a way that Rione but hopefully not Desjani would read it as agreement.

“Stand by to exit jump,” a watch-stander called. “Five…four…three…two…one…exit.”

Grayness was replaced by black space and white stars, quiet by pulsing alarms as Dauntless’s sensors picked up enemy warships nearby. Simultaneously, Geary felt himself pressed back as the battle cruiser’s maneuvering systems executed the preplanned minefield evasion, shoving the bow upward and pushing so hard with the main drives that the inertial dampers couldn’t quite block all of the effects on ship and crew.

Next time, the Syndics might try placing the minefield above the jump exit. But this time Geary stretched his mouth in a fierce grin as he saw his fleet angling upward in as tight a turn as the ships could manage at the fleet’s velocity. Sensors doing full-spectrum scans of the space around the fleet picked up the small anomalies that marked stealth mines and marked out a minefield along the path the fleet would have taken straight from the exit. Geary did a quick estimate in his head and decided that if the fleet had come through at a higher speed, it couldn’t have turned in time to avoid the mines.

Ignoring the rest of the star system, he focused on the area within a few light-minutes of the jump exit. It took a moment to believe what he was seeing: the worst case he’d assumed wouldn’t really happen in this form, even though he’d prepared for it. Just on the far side of the minefield, Syndic warships waited. Four battleships and six battle cruisers, plus an even eight heavy cruisers but only three light cruisers and barely a dozen HuKs, in a concave-disk formation focused on the center of the jump exit. Anything coming through the minefield would have run right into those warships while shields were still weakened, before damage could be completely assessed, let alone corrected. But…

“They’re only a light-minute away and at dead stop relative to the jump exit,” Desjani gasped in amazement.

“They’ve seen Captain Geary breaking the rules,” Rione observed dryly.

Desjani shot Rione a look, then nodded. “The Syndic high command has seen new ways of fighting, but doesn’t really understand them. Just as we wouldn’t have understood what we were seeing if the Syndics had found a commander with knowledge of past fighting methods. Now the Syndics think the way to beat us is by doing similar things but pushing them past the points they’ve seen the Alliance fleet using.”

“You think that’s what’s happening?” Geary asked.

“I know it,” Desjani stated. “We would have done the same. I’m sure of that. But they’re missing the point if they go to extremes. It’s one thing to be close to a jump exit so you can charge into and hit an exiting enemy after you’ve had time to size him up. It’s another thing entirely to be too close to have time to react and without any relative speed advantage!”

“Yeah,” Geary agreed, pleased that Desjani had not only analyzed the Syndic approach but had also displayed awareness of the weaknesses her own side might have had. “Our fleet has a speed advantage already. Not a lot, but with the two forces this close, no one has time to accelerate much before the opposing warships reach engagement range.”

The leading boxes of ships in the Alliance formation were clearing the top of the minefield. Geary saw the Syndics begin to accelerate and rotate their formation so that it would center on the leading units of his fleet, and he called out commands to frustrate the move. “All units in the Alliance fleet, accelerate to point one light speed, alter course up two zero degrees. Immediate execute.”

The Alliance formation angled even farther back, moving almost vertical now relative to the plane of the Ixion Star System. The ships farthest back in the formation, those just entering normal space and still in their initial turns, wouldn’t be able to match the farther turn and would end up slightly out of position, but that wasn’t important.

The Syndic disk was flattening out as the big warships in the center of their formation accelerated faster than the small vessels around the rim. “They should have had the battleships and battle cruisers around the rim,” Geary remarked, “instead of in the center.”