The Lost Fleet: Fearless

There were speeches and news accounts on file, too, showing a much younger-looking Falco dazzling crowds with high-sounding rhetoric delivered with apparently absolute sincerity. Geary found himself wondering if he had misjudged the man, then paid closer attention to what was being said. Appalled, he heard exactly what Rione had described: Falco blaming lack of progress in the war on the government’s policies and all but openly campaigning for the role of supreme leader. I wonder what would have happened if the Syndics hadn’t captured Falco. No wonder Co-President Rione was so worried about me when I took command. She thought I’d be like Falco. But fortunately for all concerned, I come from a time when fleet officers simply didn’t do such things. It never occurred to me that someone would, let alone that they’d get away with it by appealing to the public.

Twenty years. Desjani knew Falco only by reputation. She had seemed initially thrilled, but less happy once Falco had begun contesting command with Geary. Desjani’s loyalty to Geary was apparently unshakable. Geary wondered how the rest of the fleet would regard Falco. Especially if he and Falco ended up openly butting heads over command of the fleet.

I don’t want to be stuck with commanding this fleet, but I can’t surrender that command to someone with Falco’s record. He’d doom it to destruction and then issue a press release claiming it was a great victory. And if somehow he managed to get the fleet back to Alliance space, he would be the sort of danger to the Alliance government that Rione has worried about.

Unless Falco changed while he was in that labor camp. I have to give the man some benefit of the doubt until I find out how that experience affected him.

That reminded him of the need to deal with the current Syndic threat to the fleet rather than worrying about what Falco might do. With the fleet pulling away from Sutrah Five and heading for open space above the plane of the system where traps couldn’t have been placed, there was no longer a possibility of an immediate threat. Even if a Syndic fleet appeared at one of the jump points, there would be close to a day to prepare for action. But what about the longer term? What are the Syndics doing right now that could hurt this fleet at the next star and the next?

Geary pulled up the display for this region of space and spent a long time studying it, mentally jumping the fleet from one star to possible destinations and then on again, always eventually running into the same ugly conclusion. He had been doing the same mental projections ever since the fleet arrived at Sutrah, and the answers hadn’t changed, no matter how many variations he tried. Even without running simulations, his gut instincts told him that the Syndic net was closing on this fleet. The only way to avoid it was to do something so unpredictable the Syndics wouldn’t regard it as worth considering. How could he find something like that which wasn’t also suicidal?

His gaze kept coming back to one star. Sancere.

No, that’s crazy.

Crazy enough that the Syndics won’t believe I’d take the fleet there?

Maybe. I’m certain that as far as the Syndics know, it can’t be done the way I want to do it. They’re wrong. I know a way.

But how would I convince the fleet to follow me to Sancere?

THREE

THE hatch alert on Geary’s stateroom chimed, startling Geary back into awareness of the here and now. He was surprised to see how long he’d spent thinking about the fleet’s next steps. Bringing up the fleet display as well, Geary checked the position within Sutrah System. As planned, the fleet had left Sutrah Five and was now following a course that would allow it to head for either of the other two jump points in the system. Only an hour remained before the fleet would launch the kinetic retaliatory bombardment of the two inhabited worlds. There wasn’t any rush. Neither the two planets nor the targets on their surfaces could go anywhere except along the predictable and fixed orbits that made them sitting ducks for bombardments. “Please enter,” Geary called.

Captain Falco had managed to very quickly acquire a uniform adorned with all of the ribbons and awards to which he was apparently entitled. He’d also gotten his hair trimmed, but Geary couldn’t help noticing how the dashing young officer whose pictures he’d seen in old reports had been aged considerably by not just twenty years of time but also the hardships of a Syndic labor camp. Falco gave Geary a friendly, confident smile as he entered the stateroom. Geary recognized that exact smile from some of the records he had reviewed. “I’m sure you’d like to discuss our options for future operations,” Falco stated graciously. “My expertise and leaderships skills are at your disposal, of course.”