Victorious

After Timbale’s image had vanished, Geary turned back to his fleet status display. A tremendous amount of repair work had been done, with the extensive facilities at Varandal working around the clock, but there had also been a tremendous amount of damage to the fleet’s ships.

Still, the battle cruiser Incredible had lived up to her name, somehow getting back into shape for combat despite the awful damage suffered in battles on the way home. Inspire, under the command of Captain Duellos, had also returned to full combat capability, even though not all of the repairs would have passed fleet inspections, and Duellos reported that much of Inspire’s crew remained slightly shell-shocked from what had become of their former command officer. It was one thing for a captain to die in battle and another thing entirely to lose a captain because of treason.

Other battleships and battle cruisers had either regained almost full capability, or enough to accompany the fleet once again. Given enough resources, any ship could be patched together again as long as it hadn’t been blown to pieces, and Varandal and the surrounding star systems had poured everything they had into the repair effort.

Geary frowned as his eye rested on the name of Orion. That battleship’s performance had been nothing but disappointing while she was commanded by Captain Numos and ever since as well. His plans to break up her crew and recrew the ship had been stymied by all the problems that would have created in reassigning so many fleet personnel while everyone was scrambling to get their ships back into shape.

He wondered what the captains of the new ships would be like, how much retraining they might need to fight with the rest of the fleet’s ships. Following that line of thought, he brought up data on the new battle cruisers, wondering what the Adroit class was like. Scanning the information, Geary felt like punching the virtual display. Under the guise of producing a new class of ships, the Alliance had reduced their size and capabilities as well as their cost. The Adroit-class ships were shorter and massed less than Dauntless and her sister ships, they carried fewer hell lances in fewer batteries, and fewer specter missiles, grapeshot, and mines. At least their propulsion capability seemed to match the older battle cruisers’.

Unhappily reading over the differences in the new ships, Geary had a deeper understanding of why the fleet was so unhappy with the government. Even though he knew how badly stressed the Alliance was by the cost and resources demanded by the war, he still felt angry at the diminished capability of the Adroit-class ships.

But he had learned by now that he had to fight with what was available. Five more battle cruisers of lesser capability were still five more battle cruisers.

Geary looked up as the alert on his stateroom hatch sounded. “Come in.”

The hatch almost flew open, and Tanya Desjani stormed in, a thundercloud on her forehead.

Leaping to his feet, Geary stood as she slammed the hatch shut and stalked to stand directly in front of him. “What’s the matter?”

“That woman! That politician! She brought a Syndic aboard this ship without notifying me!”

Geary felt a familiar headache beginning. “Why did Rione bring a Syndic aboard this ship?”

“She didn’t deign to inform me!” Desjani was as angry as he’d ever seen her, incensed at the disregard of her prerogatives as commanding officer of Dauntless. “I respectfully request, Fleet Admiral Geary, that you intervene in this matter since the senator is not under my command!”

He had a million things he needed to be doing at that moment. Given the bad blood between them, he could guess why Rione had failed to tell Desjani, but why had Rione also not told him? Geary was reaching to call her when his hatch alert chimed again. “Come in.”

Co-President Rione entered, appearing oblivious to Desjani’s glower. “Oh, good, you’re both here. I wanted to inform the captain that there was a last-minute high-priority prisoner diversion. My apologies for not getting that information to you sooner.”

Desjani spoke with obviously forced control. “Madam Co-President, I am supposed to be informed and give my approval before any prisoners are transferred on or off this ship.”

“It was, as I said, last-minute. I had to make a snap decision to keep the Syndic from being sent on to the prison ship taking the others to the camp at Tartarus.”

Breaking in before Desjani could erupt again, Geary spoke to Rione. “What’s so special about this Syndic?”

“He wants to talk to you.”

Geary glared at Rione. “There’s a billion somebodies who want to talk to me. What’s so special about this Syndic?”

She gazed back dispassionately. “He’s the CEO who was the second in command of the Syndic reserve flotilla, captured by us after his ship was destroyed in the battle here.”

“He is?” Geary’s anger drained as he considered that. “Why does he want to talk to me?”