The Lost Fleet: Fearless

“Let’s hope not,” Geary agreed. “You’ve done outstanding work as an independent formation commander.” He paused. “I’m also granting a battlefield promotion to captain. Congratulations. You earned it. We’ll have a proper ceremony at Ilion if time permits.”

“Captain?” Cresida smiled, looking stunned. “Thank you, sir. I don’t know what else to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Like I said, you earned it. Task Force Furious has proven to be a very valuable asset to this fleet.” Geary leaned back, relaxing in a way he knew communicated that the formal portion of the conference was over. “Commander Cresida-excuse me, Captain Cresida, there’s something I’ve been wondering.” She gave him an attentive look even as she smiled at the first use of her new rank. “When that hypernet gate here was destroyed, what happened to any ships heading for Sancere?”

“There’s two possibilities, sir,” Cresida stated. “One is that when the pathway between the Sancere gate and whatever gate they come from was broken, everything in it was destroyed in one manner or another.”

Geary nodded, thinking of ships suddenly dying without any warning. Enemy ships, but still…“What’s the other possibility?”

“It’s actually considered by far the most likely, sir,” Cresida assured him. “It’s believed that when the path ceases to exist, any ships affected simply fall back into normal space.”

“That’s all?” On the heels of his statement, Geary realized what that meant. “They drop into normal space. Somewhere between whatever star they came from and Sancere.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which could be a long, long ways from any star,” Geary added.

“Yes, sir.” Cresida grimaced. “With luck, and rationing, and some creative attempts at converting compartments into growing areas to recycle waste, grow food, and regenerate oxygen supplies, they should be able to make it to a star from which they could use jump points to get somewhere safe.”

“It’d take years, though, even if they were only a light-year from the nearest star.”

“At the sort of economical cruising speed they’d have to use, yes, sir. Probably at least ten years. Possibly a lot more.”

Geary shook his head. “I guess it beats dying. Oh, hell, they could use some of their escape pods. Put most of their crews into survival sleep without launching the pods. That would stretch all of their supplies a lot. I wouldn’t want to be one of the guys left awake, though. That’d be a long time staring at a star getting bigger very, very slowly.”

“It’s not like we’re going to be home tomorrow,” Cresida pointed out wryly.

“True. And if we caused a lot of Syndic warships to get stuck between stars for a decade, that ought to help out the Alliance a bit.” He smiled somewhat, too. “Maybe they’d finally get to a star and find out the war had been over for years. I wonder how that would feel?”

Cresida didn’t reply for a moment. “Some of us wonder if the war will ever be over, if we and the Syndics will just keep fighting no matter what happens.”

Geary looked at her, recalling that the war had been going on for Cresida’s entire life and long before then. “I suppose sometimes it must seem like it’ll last forever. But there must be a way to bring it to an end in a way that preserves the safety of the Alliance and ensures the Syndics won’t attack again.” The ability to use hypernet gates as means of unparalleled destruction came back to him, then. That would end the war and eliminate the Syndic threat. Would he ever come to believe that was the only thing to do? Or, worse, that it was the right thing to do? “I’ll see you at Ilion, Captain.”

TEN

AFTER the riches of Sancere, Ilion seemed bare and bereft. A single marginally habitable world boasted a few enclosed cities, one of them already apparently shut down for lack of inhabitants. The only shipping to be seen were a few aged in-system ships running between the habitable world and some old industrial facilities near an asteroid belt. No warships to be seen, and the Syndic military base that had occupied a moon of a gas giant about two light-hours out from the star had also been mothballed.

Geary decided not to bother communicating with the inhabitants of the Syndic planet. He had no intention of bringing the fleet near them and couldn’t imagine they had anything he needed. Indeed, careful examination of the closed Syndic military base showed that it been stripped of supplies, with even some of the equipment cannibalized. “It looks like they’ve been taking that base apart for a couple of decades, at least,” Desjani observed. “With Sancere so close, everybody who could leave must have already left.”

“Why do you suppose the Syndics haven’t already evacuated the planet, then?” Geary wondered.

“I’d bet because moving all of those people would cost a fair amount of money. They’ve probably been left there to fend for themselves because on a Syndic corporate balance sheet they’re not worth moving.”