The Lost Fleet – Dauntless

He fiddled with his controls, finally finding one that provided reports on the Syndic base nearby. Some of the images seemed to confirm that the base had indeed been maintaining stockpiles of supplies on hand for any passing ships that needed them. It’d been a safe assumption that the supplies would still be there even if the base had been abandoned, since shipping out the materiel would’ve cost more than they were worth, and keeping those supplies deep-frozen and unaffected by weather was rarely a problem on worlds that were usually far enough from their stars to lack meaningful atmosphere. The stockpiles are supposed to be for Syndic warships, of course, but I’ve no intention of being picky at this point. I hope Syndic fleet food is better than what the Alliance serves, but I doubt it.

Ancestors. I made a joke to myself. I wonder if I’m starting to really thaw out.

I wonder if I want to thaw out.

“Captain Geary.” He glanced back and saw Co-President Rione still in her seat on the bridge, her face revealing no emotions. “Do you believe all Syndic resistance in the Corvus System has been eliminated?”

“No.” Geary gestured at the display before his chair, wondering how much of it Rione could see. “As you’ve seen, our Marines are in the process of taking the military base on the fourth world. There’s a couple of military bases around the second world, that’s the inhabited one. They don’t even know we’re here yet.”

“Will they be a threat to the fleet?”

“No. They’re obsolete and designed to defend the planet, which we have no interest in messing with. I don’t intend bothering with them if I can help it.”

Captain Desjani gave Geary a surprised look. “We should eliminate all Syndic military capability in this system.”

“Those fortresses aren’t any threat to us and wouldn’t be worth the Syndics moving anywhere else,” Geary replied. “But I’d have to divert some ships to take them out, expend weapons in the process, and worry about damage to civilian targets on the planet from any pieces of the fortresses that enter atmosphere.”

“I see.” Desjani nodded. “There’s no sense in using up our limited supply of weapons on them, and you don’t want to split up the fleet.”

“Right.” Geary gave no sign he’d noticed Desjani didn’t acknowledge the point about civilian casualties. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rione watching them both intently.

The Co-President gestured toward Geary’s display. “You’ve recalled the forces guarding the jump point?”

“Yes. If anything comes through there now, it’ll almost certainly be too powerful for my battle cruisers to handle, and I’m not prepared to sacrifice them or any other ships just to blunt the nose of a Syndic pursuit force.”

Rione studied the display again. “You don’t think they could retreat quickly enough to rejoin us?”

“No, Madam Co-President, I don’t.” Geary moved his finger across the display as he spoke. “You see, anything coming out of the jump point will probably be at pursuit speed. Say point one light, just like we were. While they were on guard, my battle cruisers were matching the movement of the jump point in the system, but that’s a lot slower. The Syndics would have a big speed advantage, too big for my battle cruisers, or any ship in this fleet, to overcome before they got battered into wrecks.”

Desjani had been following the conversation silently, but now looked toward Rione. “If we had some automated warships, we could expend some of those on the mission without the risk of losing personnel. But we have none of those.”

Geary frowned, sensing from the expressions on Desjani’s and Rione’s faces that the statement had considerable history behind it. “Has that been proposed? Building fully automated warships?”

“It has been proposed,” Rione responded dryly.

Captain Desjani’s expression hardened. “In the opinion of many officers, we would gain great advantages in situations such as this if the construction of uncrewed ships controlled by artificial intelligences would be approved.”

Rione met Desjani look for look. “Then I’m afraid those officers are doomed to disappointment. One of my final acts before departing Alliance space with this fleet was participating in an Alliance Assembly vote regarding such a program. It was overwhelmingly defeated. The civil leadership of the Alliance is not willing to entrust weapons and weapons employment decisions to artificial intelligences, especially when those AIs are to be given control of warships capable of inflicting great harm on inhabited worlds.”

Desjani flushed. “If oversight AIs were also installed-”

“They’d be subject to the same potential failures, instabilities, and unpredictable behavioral development.”

“Install an override!”