The Lost Fleet: Courageous

Stockpiles of mines were low, specter missile inventories on the warships ranged from low to moderate, but at least grapeshot load-outs were high. No surprise there, since metal ball bearings were pretty easy to manufacture.

Food stocks were okay, but that would be a problem, too, if he didn’t find more. The food brought from the Alliance was effectively gone, with the fleet subsisting mostly on Syndic rations looted from mothballed facilities or storage locations in Sancere. The Sancere stuff wasn’t too bad, for Syndic food, but when that was gone, all that would be left would be food regarded by the Syndics as not worth bringing with them when they abandoned facilities. He’d had some of that food, and even for someone accustomed to the dubious nature of military rations, it had been hard to stomach. It would keep a person alive, but that was its only virtue.

“Estimate twelve hours to combat. Please ensure your crews get plenty of rest,” Geary ordered his ship captains, then went off to pretend to rest himself.

FIVE hours to intercept.

“They’re sprinting, sir,” Desjani reported unhappily. “To get to the jump point for Branwyn before us. They started accelerating about an hour ago, but we just saw it. We can send some battle cruisers ahead to try to still make the intercept before the Syndics get to the jump point, but the entire fleet can’t accelerate fast enough to do it.”

Throw unsupported battle cruisers at that Syndic formation? He could add in some light cruisers and destroyers as well, but that would still leave the battle cruisers badly outgunned. “No. We can’t risk the battle cruisers that way.”

Desjani stiffened, her affronted pride clear. “Sir, battle cruisers are proud of their role as the fast-moving strike force of the fleet. We can hit the enemy fast and repeatedly while the rest of the fleet catches up.”

We, of course. Dauntless being a battle cruiser, too. “I appreciate that, Captain Desjani, but in this case we’d have to divert the Syndic flotilla from their current course in order for it to make sense to separate the battle cruisers from the rest of the fleet. Our battle cruisers simply don’t have enough firepower to achieve that against a force the size of the Syndic flotilla.” He leaned closer to speak very quietly. “You know I couldn’t send Dauntless with such a strike force anyway. She’s the fleet flagship, and she carries something critically important.” He meant the Syndic hypernet key, something that could have a decisive effect on the war if they could get it home to Alliance space. Every ship in the fleet was important, but some were more important than others. Because of that hypernet key, Dauntless was by far the most important of the important.

Desjani knew that and couldn’t argue with it, so even though she still looked unhappy, she nodded in agreement.

Now Geary had to sit and watch the Syndic flotilla get to the jump point first. They’d timed their move right, leaving the Alliance fleet without enough time to respond. But when the two fleets closed to battle, he’d teach the Syndics a few things about timing maneuvers to discomfort the other side.

At point one light speed, the enemy flotilla covered thirty thousand kilometers per second. On the scale of a planetary surface, the speed was unfathomable. Against the size of even an average solar system like Lakota, where the orbital diameter of the farthest-out officially designated planet spanned about ten light-hours or roughly eleven billion kilometers, ships seemed to crawl against the star-filled darkness. Geary had sometimes wondered how people had been able to stand it in the early days of human space flight, when ships hadn’t been able to achieve velocities of anywhere near a tenth of the speed of light and been forced to take weeks, months, or even years to reach other planets and moons in just a single solar system. But he supposed people living on planets then probably had trouble grasping that once it had taken weeks, months, or years for travelers to cross continental landmasses.

“No matter how fast we go, it’s never fast enough,” Geary muttered.

To his surprise, Desjani appeared taken aback by the comment. “Sir, if the fleet could do more-”

“Sorry. That wasn’t about the fleet. The fleet’s doing wonders, as usual. No, I was just thinking about people.”

“I see, sir.” No, she obviously didn’t, but since the honor of her ship and the fleet wasn’t at stake and there were enemies to watch, Desjani was willing to let it go.

Geary did, too, watching the Syndics reach for the jump point for Branwyn and hoping they wouldn’t do what he fully expected them to do when they got there.

THEY did.

“They’re finally turning toward us,” Desjani announced. “They braked heavily to cross the jump point, and now they’re accelerating toward us.”