The Lost Fleet: Fearless

But the Syndic ambush bothered him for reasons beyond that. Rione didn’t seem to understand the implications. The survival of the Alliance fleet depended upon Geary making the right decisions and the Syndic command making the wrong decisions. If the Syndics had lost their overconfidence and begun carefully planning, then even Geary’s best moves might fail to keep the Alliance fleet at least one step ahead of Syndic forces strong enough to deal the Alliance forces a death blow.

Though even the little blows could add up. Out of the hundreds of ships in the Alliance fleet, the four lost here weren’t critical. But the fleet could be nibbled to death over time by taking such losses at star after star, and there were a lot of stars between the fleet and home.

He glanced at the display, wishing Sutrah were a lot closer to Alliance space. Wishing Sutrah had somehow miraculously gained an unguarded hypernet gate. Hell, as long as he was at it, why not wish he’d died on his ship a century ago, so he wouldn’t be in command of this fleet now, with so many lives and ships depending upon him? Snap out of it, Geary. You had every right to be depressed when they thawed you out, but you’re past that now.

The communicator chimed for his attention. “Captain Geary, we’ve spotted something important.” Captain Desjani’s voice held some emotion he couldn’t quite identify.

“Important?” If it was a threat, surely she’d have just said that.

“On the fifth world of the system. It looks like a labor camp.”

Geary gave Rione a glance to see how she was taking the news, but Rione didn’t seem to find it remarkable, either. The Syndicate Worlds had a lot of labor camps, because the Syndicate Worlds devoted a lot of effort to dealing with real or imagined internal enemies. “Is there something special about it?”

This time he could clearly identify the strain in Desjani’s voice. “We’re picking up communications from the camp that indicate it holds Alliance prisoners of war.”

Geary stared at the depiction of the fifth world in the Sutrah system. Nine light-minutes from its star, still a bit over four light-hours from the Alliance fleet. He hadn’t expected to be going near the inhabited worlds of this system, hadn’t anticipated any delays.

It looked like his plans would have to change.

I hate these meetings, Geary thought for perhaps the hundredth time, which was impressive, given that he’d only had to attend about five of the things so far. Inside the briefing room, the conference table was actually only a few meters long. But thanks to the communications net connecting the ships of the fleet and the latest virtual presence technology, the table now seemed to run off into the distance, seat after seat occupied by commanders of his ships. The most senior officers were apparently seated the closest to Geary, but all he had to do was look at any officer, no matter how far down the table, and they’d loom close, identification information helpfully appearing right next to them.

Granted, the conferences had an odd rhythm to them. The fleet had been drawn into a much tighter formation for the conference, but because of light speed limitations on the communications, the farther-off ships were still twenty or even thirty light-seconds off. Those were the smallest ships with the most junior commanders, of course, the ones who were expected to watch, learn, and keep their mouths shut, so the delayed-action nature of their interactions had little impact. But even for closer ships there could be several seconds’ delay between question and answer, so the participants had learned to speak, pause, speak, pause, allowing time for interjections and comments to arrive.

Captain Numos, commanding officer of the Orion, was staring down his nose at Geary, doubtless still seething over his own poor performance at Kaliban, which of course Numos blamed on Geary rather than himself. Near Numos sat Captain Faresa of the Majestic, her expression as acidic as usual. Geary wondered why Faresa didn’t somehow dissolve the table surface just by glaring at it. In welcome counterpoint to those two, Captain Duellos of the Courageous lounged in his chair, apparently relaxed but with alert eyes, and Captain Tulev of the Leviathan sat stolidly, his dismissive gaze fixed on Numos and Faresa. Farther down the table, fiery Commander Cresida of the Furious grinned openly at the prospect of more action, while not far from her appeared to sit Colonel Carabali, the senior surviving Marine in the fleet and another capable and dependable officer.

Actually sitting next to Geary was Captain Desjani, the only other person physically present in the crowded room. Co-President Rione had begged off attending, but Geary knew the officers of the ships from the Rift Federation and the Callas Republic would provide Rione with a full report of everything that happened. He suspected she’d avoided being here in person in order to see what he’d say in her absence.