The Lost Fleet – Dauntless

Captain Duellos pointed as well. “Unfortunately, this display is accurate, and neither the realities of war nor the laws of physics have changed since your last battle, Captain Geary. We’re here, the Syndics are here only two and a half light-minutes away from our leading elements, and the hypernet gate is”-his hand swung around to an area on the other side of the enemy fleet-“here, thirty light-minutes from us, on the wrong side of the enemy.”

“If we could have a few more hours to repair our damaged ships,” someone suggested.

“A few more hours or a few more days wouldn’t help,” another shot back. “The Syndics are repairing their damage, too. And they can count on reinforcements and resupply coming through that gate behind them!”

Duellos nodded to Geary. “I agree. Time is not on our side, even if the Syndic deadline is not enforced.”

Geary nodded back, his eyes once again tracking along the officers ranked around the table. “We can’t hold off an attack. Nor can we attack them and have any expectation of survival.”

Numos spoke again, his face red. “Individual ships might be able to-”

“To what, Captain? Get to that…gate? Then what?” Geary heard a collective intake of breath. “This fleet has a Syndic hypernet key. I know that. But I assume the ships using it must go through together.” A murmur of agreement came. “I repeat, an-every-ship-for-itself plan will not be followed by this fleet, and any commanding officer who tries it will be court-martialed by me if I can catch them, or killed by the Syndics when they reach that gate alone and can’t get through it.” Silence.

Geary sat back and rubbed his chin. “That’s what we can’t do. But it’s not every option. Perhaps one of you can explain this to me.” He hesitated over the display controls, finally finding the right ones. “Here.” Geary pointed to a spot slightly behind and off to the side from the Alliance forces. “Twenty light-minutes away from the Alliance ships nearest to it. Why isn’t this guarded?”

Everyone frowned and craned to look. Finally, Captain Faresa gave Geary one of her looks, one that seemed capable of eating away metal. “Because it’s meaningless.”

“Meaningless.” Geary let the word hang for a moment, wondering as he did so if he could figure out a legitimate way to avoid having to see Faresa’s face again. “That’s the system jump point.” Shrugs met his statement. “Dammit, why can’t we use that to get out of this?”

Duellos spoke slowly. “Captain Geary, there’s likely only one or two stars within jump range of that point.”

“There’s only one,” Geary stated flatly. It hadn’t been hard to look up that piece of information. “Corvus.”

“Then you see the problem, sir. The system jump method is too limited in range. The Corvus System is itself only a few light years away, and still deeply buried within Syndic territory.”

“I know that. But from Corvus we could jump to any of”-he checked his figures-“three other systems.” Geary could see the other officers exchanging looks, but no one spoke. “From one of those systems we could jump to others.”

Captain Faresa shook her head. “You aren’t seriously suggesting getting back to Alliance space by using system jump drives, are you?”

“Why not? It’s still faster-than-light.”

“Not nearly faster-than-light enough! Do you have any idea how deep in Syndic space we are?”

Geary openly glared at her. “Since the shape of the galaxy hasn’t altered appreciably since my last command, yes, I do know how deep we are in Syndic space. So we’ve got a long haul out of here. It’s a chance. Do you prefer dying here?”

“Better that than commit slow suicide! We don’t have the supplies to sustain that kind of journey. It would take many months. Perhaps years, depending on the route. But that’s irrelevant, because the Syndic fleet will simply get there ahead of us and destroy us as we arrive!”

Geary was trying to tamp down his anger enough to formulate an answer, when Captain Desjani began speaking as if to herself. “Corvus System isn’t on the Syndic hypernet. The Syndic fleet couldn’t beat us there.” Desjani looked around. “They’d have to follow us through the same system jump point. That’d take time.”

Captain Duellos nodded eagerly. “Yes! We’d have a free window to transit Corvus to our next jump point. Not a long one, but time enough. Then the Syndics would have to guess what our next destination would be.”

“We don’t have the supplies!” Faresa insisted. Duellos glared at her in a way that made it clear there was no love lost between them. “Who even knows what’s at Corvus?”

“It can’t be that important,” someone suggested. “Not if the system isn’t on the Syndic hypernet.”

“We don’t know what’s there!”

“Captain Faresa.” She turned to glare at Geary as he gestured to the representation of the Syndic fleet. “We know what’s here, don’t we? Can anything in Corvus be worse? We’ll face better odds no matter what, and we’ll have the transit time in jump space to repair internal damage to the ships.”