The Lost Fleet – Dauntless

Silence fell. Numos seemed to have a glint of satisfaction lurking in the back of his eyes, as if he thought he’d scored points against Geary. Geary calmed himself, knowing he couldn’t afford to lose his temper. He looked along the long, long lines of captains whose images appeared to be seated at the table, trying to judge whether he’d harmed his standing, and not knowing what else he could’ve said. “If I may continue, the Syndics don’t know we’ve come to Kaliban. It’ll be another few days before they even realize we didn’t go to Yuon. Only then will they start looking elsewhere for us. We need to use that time to replenish whatever stocks we can. Our auxiliaries,” he nodded toward the place where Captain Tyrosian sat, “are going to see what raw materials they can gather, while they also devote time to manufacturing more of the things this fleet needs and getting it distributed to the ships that need it.”

“Captain Tyrosian’s in charge of the auxiliaries division? What happened to Captain Gundel?” an officer asked. He was looking at Tyrosian with a puzzled, not hostile, expression.

“Captain Gundel has been assigned to assist me with a long-range assessment of this fleet’s needs,” Geary answered. “He’s transferring to Titan.”

“I heard Gundel had been relieved of command,” another officer challenged.

Word travels fast. That hasn’t changed since my time. Geary looked back toward Tyrosian. “Fleet regulations prohibit having an officer serve as a ship’s commanding officer and in a staff assignment. Therefore, I was required to give command of Jinn to Captain Gundel’s executive officer. Captain Gundel,” Geary added, “agreed with all of these changes.”

Tyrosian, unused to being the center of attention at such meetings, simply nodded.

“Will Captain Gundel say that if he’s asked?” the officer continued.

“If you don’t regard my own statements as sufficiently reliable,” Geary stated dryly, “feel free to contact Captain Gundel. But I should advise you that he’s likely to tell you he’s too busy to deal with many interruptions.”

Smiles broke out around the table. As Geary had guessed, many commanding officers had been forced to deal with Captain Gundel while he was in charge of the auxiliaries, and they all knew the point of Geary’s half-disguised barb.

The challenger could see the smiles, too, and obviously realized he wouldn’t have many allies in protesting against Gundel’s transfer. “That’s fine. I just wanted to be sure, that’s all.”

“Good.” Geary looked slowly around the table. From the majority of the expressions, he’d maintained his hold on the fleet for now. But too many seem to be sympathetic to what Numos was saying. Why? They’re not stupid. But too many seem very unhappy that we didn’t fight at Corvus, common sense and simple smarts be damned. All right. If they want to fight, they’ll need to learn how. “We’re going to do something else while we’re here.”

Everyone watched him, some eagerly and some warily. “I’ve had the opportunity to watch the fleet in action.” Now was the time for the most diplomatic language Geary could muster. He wished he’d been able to trust Rione enough on internal fleet politics to have her help him with the wording. “The courage of the personnel and the capabilities of the ships of this fleet are truly impressive. You have much to be proud of.” He threw that last sentence in on the spur of the moment, trying to regain the high ground on that issue from Numos. “Our goal isn’t just victory in battle. It’s inflicting the heaviest possible losses on the enemy while suffering the fewest possible losses ourselves. There are things we can do to maximize our ability to win those kind of victories.”

The wariness was still there on the faces of his ship commanders. Geary called up another display, showing battle formations he’d once practiced, learning how to coordinate groups of ships to bring them together at decisive points. He’d thought a long time about this, about how to tell them they didn’t know how to fight a battle worth a damn. “Coordination, teamwork, and ship formations that allow us to take the best advantages of those qualities. It takes a lot of practice to carry these off right, but the payoff will be that the Syndics won’t be prepared to defend against them.”

“We can put ships in those formations,” someone objected, “but they’re worse than useless without someone who can coordinate action across light-minutes in the face of an enemy who’s acting and reacting. That’s the problem. It always gets too difficult with the time-late information. We’ve got the basic concepts laid down in tactical guides, but nobody actually knows how to work those formations anymore.”

Commander Cresida of the Furious spoke for the first time. “That’s been true, but I believe we now have someone who does know how to do that. Someone who learned it a long time ago.” She looked at Geary with a grim smile.