Victorious

Desjani looked unhappy, then slowly nodded. “We need every advantage we can get when we know so little about these aliens. And if he tries to betray us, I want him within easy reach of an Alliance Marine with a loaded weapon.”

TWO and a half days later, Geary ordered the fleet into motion. He watched the swarm of warships come together into the single large formation he’d ordered for this part of the transit. Except for the flaring main propulsion units at their sterns, the warships resembled sharks of various sizes, a bit shorter and chunkier than any shark in the case of the battleships, but otherwise the comparison came easily. Fins carrying sensors, weapons, and shield generators projected from the curved surfaces of the hulls, which were designed to deflect hits. The fast, lean, and small sharks that were destroyers darted swiftly to their assigned positions relative to Dauntless, the larger light cruisers moving among them with almost as much agility. The heavy cruisers swung through space with calm authority, their greater armor, weaponry, and bulk reflecting their primary mission as killers of other escorts.

The battleships moved like the monsters they were, huge, bristling with weapons, slower, and almost clumsy because of their massive size, yet as near to indestructible as anything humanity put into space. Around them came the battle cruisers, about the same size as the battleships and well armed, but leaner and faster, having traded protection for more ability to accelerate and maneuver.

Near the center of the formation were the so-called fast fleet auxiliaries. “Fast” only in the minds of whoever had given them the name, the auxiliaries were neither rounded nor sharklike. Instead, their blocky lines resembled what they were, mammoth self-propelled manufacturing facilities that carried their own raw materials to fashion replacements for needed repairs as well as new fuel cells, missiles, grapeshot, and mines to replace those used by the warships. In combat, they were a constant worry, unable to maneuver as well as the warships or protect themselves very well, but without the resupply and repair capability on those auxiliaries, Geary could never have brought the fleet back through Syndic space. He hoped he wouldn’t need them as badly this time.

The images of the new Adroit-class battle cruisers held his gaze for a moment, and he had to avoid frowning at his display in displeasure. There was no telling what anyone watching him might think the frown was about, and he knew from long experience that everyone watched the most senior officers to judge their current attitudes and emotions. It was one of the first survival tactics any reasonably smart junior officer learned.

But he wasn’t unhappy at anyone in the fleet or the actions of any of the warships. His displeasure sprang from having used the fleet’s software to conduct a virtual tour of Adroit herself several hours ago. Geary had long ago resigned himself to the fact that the warships in this future weren’t finely honed structures built to endure for decades. Instead, they were all built quickly, with few frills and many a rough edge. A century of war had resulted in warships whose short expected life span didn’t justify craftsmanship.

But the Adroit class had taken that to a new and lower level, worse than he had realized just from reviewing the official statistics about the new battle cruisers. As Geary’s avatar had toured the ship, he had been forced to ever greater efforts to avoid revealing how appalled he was by construction shortcuts and design compromises that had saved time and money at the cost of creating significant weaknesses in the Adroit and her sister ships. He could tell from Captain Kattnig’s explanations and occasional apologies about equipment that Adroit’s commanding officer was well aware of her shortcomings, and any veterans among her crew surely knew as well. But it would have served no purpose for him to emphasize and openly fixate on the design problems. Geary had been on the receiving end of that before, stuck with equipment he knew wasn’t all it should be, then forced to endure failing grades and harsh criticisms aimed at him and his personnel from inspection teams that seemed to think crews were supposed to miraculously overcome the accumulated failures of the design, procurement, and testing processes.