The Lost Fleet – Dauntless

He couldn’t help glaring at Numos’s formation, even though he’d realized he could use its position to his advantage. “Formation Fox Five Two, adjust course starboard three zero, down zero point five and increase velocity to point one light at time four zero. Roll formation axis six zero to port.” If the Syndics tried to run for some of the other jump points on the other side of the system they’d have to veer off toward the inner system of Kaliban. The odds of them making that long a run were slim anyway, but now if they tried that, Numos’s ships should be able to intercept their track and rake them as they ran.

If they didn’t try to run, Geary’s other formations would hit them in quick succession.

He sat back, breathing heavily as if he’d just physically exerted himself, knowing he’d have to just watch for a while and see what happened. It would be perhaps a half hour before the formations swept into contact again.

“Captain Geary?” Geary looked back to see Co-President Rione still on the bridge, apparently calm, but her eyes very alert. “Do you have one moment?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Geary flashed a tense smile. “It’ll be at least a few minutes until I can tell if everyone’s following orders and if the Syndics are doing anything unexpected. It’s a very old military dilemma. Hurry up and wait.”

“Could you explain something for me, then?” She gestured around vaguely. “You gave orders in terms of ‘up’ and ‘down,’ ‘port’ and ‘starboard,’ yet the ships of your fleet are in a wide range of aspects. You are upside down relative to the ships in Captain Tulev’s force, for example. How do they know which way you mean?”

Desjani, unseen by Rione, rolled her eyes at the Co-President’s ignorance, but Geary just pointed at the display. “It’s a standard convention, Madam Co-President, one every sailor learns by heart. It had to be established to provide a common frame of reference in an unbounded three-dimensional environment.” He sketched the shape of Kaliban’s system. “Every star system has a plane in which its planets or other objects orbit. One side of that plane is labeled ‘up,’ and the other side ‘down.’ So up and down within the system doesn’t change regardless of how your ship is oriented. By the same token, the direction toward the star is ‘starboard’ while the direction away from the star is ‘port.’” Geary shrugged. “I’ve been told that early on they tried to use ‘starward’ instead of ‘starboard,’ but the older expression stuck.”

“I see. You take your orientation from the outside, not from yourself or from the aspect of the ship.”

“It’s the only way it could work. Otherwise, no two ships could be counted on to figure out what the other one meant by directions.”

“What if you meet outside a star system? Where there is no such reference?”

Desjani looked startled. Geary also felt a shock of surprise at the question. But, then, how could Rione know better? “It doesn’t happen. How could two ships meet up in interstellar space? Why would they be there, too far from the nearest star to use it for reference? Why would two ships, or fleets, fight where there was no reason to fight? Nothing to defend, nothing to attack, no jump points or hypernet gates. The weaker side could just run away indefinitely.”

Rione stared back, her own surprise visible. “You always choose to fight?”

“You saw what happened at Corvus. We just kept going, and the Syndics couldn’t catch us before we left. Space, even within star systems, is too big, and ships are still far too slow relative to that, for combat to be forced if one side refuses to engage and can’t be blocked from running. If we’d wanted to defend a planet in Corvus or deny use of its jump points, we’d have had to stay and fight, but that wasn’t the case.”

Rione’s stare shifted to the display. “As you chose to fight here.”

“That’s right. If we’d run instead, the Syndics wouldn’t have caught us.” And it increasingly looks like I made the right decision to fight. Don’t get too cocky, Geary. It’s not over yet. But we’ve done a tremendous amount of damage to them. He checked the information on his display. “They’re still headed for our auxiliaries.”

“You don’t seem worried.”

“No. If they’d immediately scattered and run after their pass through us, some of them might’ve gotten away. But now they’ve given me time to bring my ships back at them.” He didn’t add something that he knew to be true. The fate of the Syndic force had been sealed. All of those Syndic ships would be destroyed in the near future.