The Lost Fleet: Fearless

The watch-stander smiled with relief on having clear instructions to a way out of the problem. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. We’ll get right on it.”

“Thanks.” Geary looked at Desjani. “It’ll help with planning.”

Desjani smiled, as confident in Geary as ever. “You have a plan for Sancere?”

“That’s right. Sancere is unlikely to be lightly defended. I’m assuming we’ll face a strong enough force to be a problem. If I’m wrong, we’ll be able to adjust to less opposition.”

“You’ll strike for the hypernet gate?”

“Yeah.” Geary looked down, frowning. “I’ve been trying to look up something about that. I assume the Syndics might try to destroy the thing. Just how hard is it to destroy a hypernet gate?”

Desjani looked surprised. “I have no idea. It gets talked about sometimes, but no one’s ever actually done it, to my knowledge.”

Geary shrugged. “Hopefully, it won’t be an issue. If we can draw any Syndic defenders out of position and lunge for the hypernet gate, we might be able to keep them from destroying it even if they want to. After we have that, we can defeat the defenders, loot what supplies we need, and destroy every facility related to the Syndic war effort.”

Desjani’s eyes gleamed. “It’ll be a nasty blow to the Syndics, hitting something so important where they surely never expected it to be seriously threatened.”

“Right.” If they’re not waiting for us with the kind of ambush that almost annihilated this fleet in the Syndic home system. And if my fleet doesn’t fall apart any further before we get there. Geary stood. “I’ll be meeting with some of the ship commanders.”

COMMANDER Cresida appeared to sit next to Geary, the other twenty-eight ship commanders ranked down the table, all plainly curious why they’d been singled out for this virtual meeting.

“You’ve been selected because your records and the records of your ships mark you as both brave and steady in combat,” Geary explained. “We’ll be arriving in Sancere with no idea what sort of forces the Syndics have on hand. It’s not likely to be anything we can’t handle,” he stated confidently and hoped fervently, “but it might be enough to cause us losses if we don’t deal with it well. Here’s what I need from you. Commander Cresida on Furious will be in command of a special task force comprising your ships. Task Force Furious won’t be broken out separately from the rest of the fleet when we arrive at Sancere. What you’ll do is simulate breaking formation, Furious first and the others following, as if you were engaging in an undisciplined charge at the strongest force of Syndic ships we can spot.”

Commander Cresida and the other commanders couldn’t hide their puzzlement. “You want us to break formation?” Cresida asked. “To look like we’re being so aggressive we aren’t paying attention to orders?”

“Yes.” Geary pointed to a representation of Sancere’s system. “Charge headlong at the enemy. There’s not enough of you here to deal with the likely number of Syndic ships guarding Sancere or just there getting refitted or undergoing repairs. That’s deliberate. I want you to look like a small force that has rashly separated from the rest of the fleet and can be easily destroyed. You go racing down toward the enemy, but short of engagement range, I want you to turn, raggedly and still in an undisciplined fashion, and flee downward, away from the Syndics and the rest of the fleet.” Geary traced the imagined tracks with his finger.

Cresida looked horrified. “As if we were running from the enemy?”

“Exactly.” None of the commanders looked happy. “There’s a good reason for that. The idea is-”

“Sir,” Cresida interrupted, her expression concerned and earnest. “The Syndics won’t believe it.”

Geary had been momentarily upset at the thought that Cresida might act as bullheaded as Numos. But what she said nipped that anger in the bud because it seemed to have a good reason behind it. “Why not?”

“We don’t flee battle, sir.” The pride in Cresida’s voice couldn’t be missed. “Regardless of the odds.” All of the other commanders nodded in agreement. “The Syndics know this. They won’t believe a feigned retreat.”

That was a problem, but Geary couldn’t see any grounds for denying Cresida’s assessment, especially with all of the other specially selected ship captains agreeing with her. It also matched the fighting-spirit-triumphing-over-all-odds nonsense that he had heard from Falco. How could he disregard the advice of commanders he had already decided were particularly trustworthy? “Then I want your advice. Any of you. How do we draw off Syndic defenders, get them chasing Task Force Furious instead of paying attention to what the rest of the fleet is doing?”

Commander Neeson of the Implacable shrugged. “Captain Geary, if you want to get the Syndics chasing us, then I’d recommend a firing pass. Come in hard and fast, hit the outermost units with everything we can throw at them, then sweep onward.”