The Lost Fleet: Fearless

Geary breathed a sigh of relief as Dauntless tallied the Syndic losses. One of the battleships raked repeatedly and left drifting and dead. Two battle cruisers severely damaged. All four heavy cruisers on that flank destroyed along with five of the Hunter-Killers. Status updates sent to Dauntless from the Task Force Furious ships and arriving now along with the light from the battle revealed the Alliance ships had taken little or no damage. “Nice job,” Captain Desjani commented.

“Very nice,” Geary agreed. Then he stiffened. On the two-hour-old time-late images, Task Force Furious had started bending around in a very wide turn, arcing up, over, and to the side as if intending another firing run at the flailing Syndics. You’re not supposed to do that, Cresida. Don’t risk it.

At the speeds the warships of Task Force Furious were traveling, the turn took a long time and a lot of space, even with the ships braking their velocity to reduce the turn radius. But eventually it became clear that Cresida had ordered another pass. Damn. She should’ve known better.

The Syndics had taken advantage of the delay to straighten out their formation and face their heaviest firepower toward the Alliance attackers. Apparently anticipating another blow to the flanks, the Syndic formation now clustered the surviving light units in the center, the remaining battleships and battle cruisers ranked in two vertically aligned planes, narrow ends facing the Alliance attack on either side like slices of bread enclosing the weaker ships. It was ironic to see the big ships escorting the smaller ships that were supposed to escort them, but Geary was impressed that the Syndics had so quickly figured out a counter to Cresida’s tactic of hitting a flank.

“What do you suppose she did?” Captain Desjani asked, her voice intrigued rather than worried. The past tense sounded strange when they were watching events unfold, but it was a reminder that whatever had happened had already taken place, for better or worse.

“We’ll soon see,” Geary replied, trying not to sound furious himself at the actions of Furious. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t change it, just watch history two hours old un-scroll before his eyes as the light from the battle reached Dauntless.

Task Force Furious was now itself in an flattened pencil-shaped formation, long and thin. Geary stared at it, trying to figure out why Cresida had arranged her ships that way. The two forces closed rapidly, Task Force Furious accelerating at the best rate its handpicked force of agile ships could manage. The Alliance ships were now closing on the Syndic ships at a combined relative speed of just under.2 light. Both sides would have serious trouble getting effective fire control solutions at that speed with relativistic distortions confusing aim, but it was barely within acceptable engagement limits.

The speed and the difficulty that created with seeing the movements of other ships left the Syndics less time to react when Cresida changed her force’s trajectory through space again, the warships of Task Force Furious bending the formation down and below the waiting Syndic defenders, aiming for one exposed corner of the rectangular plane formation on the port side of the Syndic force. The single Syndic battleship anchoring that corner found itself taking fire from the entire Alliance formation as it tore past, ship after ship hurling weapons at the beleaguered Syndic warship while it could only reply with single volleys at each individual Alliance ship. Even though a lot of Alliance shots missed because of the targeting difficulties, there were so many weapons hammering the same Syndic battleship that enough hits were being scored.

The Alliance formation passed completely under the Syndic formation, still diving down to open the range and leaving in its wake the spreading cloud of debris that had been a Syndic battleship.

Desjani was laughing softly. “They’re going to be very angry with Commander Cresida. That was a good move, Captain Geary. She taunted them twice and hurt them both times. Now, look, they’re coming around to chase her, but she’s not heading for the fifth planet.”

“No.” Geary studied the track Task Force Furious was curving onto, Dauntless’s maneuvering systems quickly estimating the destination. “Cresida’s decided to go for the shipyards orbiting near the fourth world.” The huge industrial complexes were perhaps the most valuable targets in the star system. Geary had given Cresida orders not to destroy them because he wanted a chance to loot them first, but Task Force Furious could easily smash in passing the one nearly completed battleship and one battle cruiser being frantically towed out of their construction ways in an attempt to save them from the Alliance kinetic bombardment aimed at the under-construction shipping.