Dauntless tlf-1

by Jack Campbell

  Then the Syndic charge came within range of the hell-lances of the Alliance fleet, and space was filled with blazing shafts of energy converging toward the paths the Syndic ships were taking. Almost immediately thereafter, Geary saw null-fields being hurled out to also meet the onrushing Syndics.

  He could never be sure how much he’d actually seen and how much he’d imagined in snapshot fashion as the two fleets swept through each other at a combined speed of well over .1 light, the moments of actual closest approach flashing by too fast for humans to register. But by that time, the damage had been done.

  As the Alliance ships absorbed a heavy barrage against their bow shields, the outgunned Syndics had already run into the much heavier fire of Geary’s ships. Previously weakened and without time to rebuild, Syndic shields failed or let through damaging shots. Null-fields carved sudden gaps in ships while hell-lances flayed the oncoming Syndic warships.

  Dauntless’s instruments, detecting and calculating damage at superhuman speed, told her crew that most of the Syndic ships racing past Geary had taken damage. Many appeared to be little more than wrecks, still carried along with their living comrades by the force of momentum. As the Alliance main body swept through the space once occupied by the Syndic force, Geary realized many of the impacts registering on Alliance shields were actually pieces of shattered Syndic warships.

  Forcing himself to ignore the human cost of what had just happened, Geary scanned his display for summaries of the estimated damage to the Syndic force even as he gave new orders. “Main body, reverse course at time one five, turning up through zero nine zero.” That would bring the ships of his main body bending their courses upward in unison, up and over until they were going back in the other direction, chasing after the Syndic force that had passed through them, but slightly above them because of the turning radius required at the speeds they were traveling. They’d also be upside down relative to their former positions, of course, but in space that didn’t matter in the slightest.

  It was tempting, very tempting, to break the formation and let the fastest ships charge ahead, but until he knew the Syndic force had been broken, he couldn’t take that risk. He also had to make sure the rest of his fleet was still acting in coordination. And despite the damage already done to the Syndics, the enemy force was still heading toward the auxiliaries formation. “Formation Fox Five Five. Take evasive course minimum down angle two zero at time one … seven.” That would bring the auxiliaries toward the formation led by Captain Duellos, which had altered course after diving through the Syndic formation and was now swinging back up toward the bottom and rear of the Syndics. “Formation Fox Five One, close on Formation Fox Five Five and lend support.”

  Geary turned his attention to the smaller discs of cruisers and destroyers that had made up the cheeks of the nutcracker. As the Syndics had charged forward, the Alliance light units had sliced off the escort units making up the edges of the Syndic formation. “Formations Fox Five Three and Fox Five Four. Maneuver independently and close on the enemy. Ensure any stragglers or detached units are destroyed. Do not, repeat do not, break formation until given orders to do so.”

  Geary took a deep breath, glaring at the depiction of the formation commanded by Captain Numos. After carrying out Geary’s orders, Fox Five Two should’ve been well above the path taken by the Syndics. Instead, it had leveled out early and was now proceeding along the same path the Syndic ships had taken, though far behind them and still a few light-seconds from even Geary’s main body formation. Apparently, Numos had tried to pivot his formation even as it crossed through the Syndics, bleeding off much of its speed to achieve a tight turn, and as a result had failed to make as heavy a strike against the enemy as he should have. He fell outside engagement range while trying to single-handedly run up the enemy’s formation from the rear. Idiot. “Formation Fox Five Two, continue pursuit and close with the enemy formation as soon as possible.” That fool’s handling of his formation kept a good chunk of my heavies out of contact during the first encounter and robbed me of some of my numerical advantage. He’ll never command another formation under me unless the living stars themselves order me to let it happen.

  Now, are the Syndics going to continue charging at the auxiliaries before turning, or are they going to run for open space to buy time to recover from their pass through us?

  Over the next few minutes, Geary could only watch as time-late images confirmed that the auxiliaries had altered course as commanded, their path curving downward toward Captain Duellos’s oncoming warships. Captain Tulev’s escorts for the auxiliaries had formed a slightly concave disc, his entire formation of warships pivoting slowly to keep its central focus on the badly hurt Syndic force. The two smaller Alliance formations were far behind but coming around, edge-on toward the Syndics. Geary’s own main body was still swinging through its course reversal.

  The Syndics, as far as he could tell, had continued heading for the auxiliaries even though the Syndic formation was increasingly ragged, as wrecked and heavily damaged ships wavered off their courses even though their momentum had kept them with the rest of the formation. Judging from the damage assessments still coming in and the raggedness of the Syndic formation, they’d lost a lot of ships. But they’re still sticking to their plan, apparently. Rigid thinking. What would they have been planning on doing after making a firing run through the auxiliaries?

  Course reversal and come back through us en masse. They’d turn about … there.

  And they still have to do that if they’re going to get out of here. There are no jump points anywhere near their current course. Their only near-term chance to escape us is if they can blow through us again going back toward the jump point they used to enter the system.

  The main body finished its course reversal, steadying on a vector leading back toward the Syndics, though of course the main body was still going far slower than the Syndic force. But now that we’re through the turn, I can crank up the engines on this force and go get those bastards. “Main body, accelerate to point one light at time three zero.” He turned to Desjani. “Captain, please adjust Dauntless’s course to keep this formation headed for an intercept with the projected path of the Syndic force.”

  Desjani seemed dazed, but nodded. “We’ll never catch them at point one light.”

  “Assume they’ll turn here,” Geary advised, pointing out his earlier conclusion. “They’ll come back toward us.”

  Her face lit up with bloodlust at the implications. “Yes! And that’ll be the last maneuver any of them will ever manage.”

  Geary looked away, then activated his command circuit again. “All units remain in formation,” he ordered again, haunted by the images of the chaos when his fleet fell apart at Corvus. “Formation Fox Five Five, increase down angle by two zero at time three eight.” That should force the Syndics to bend their own course enough to help Geary’s formations reach them in a coordinated assault. “Formation Fox Five One, alter course one zero down at time three eight. Adjust formation axis four zero degrees to starboard at time three eight. Maintain velocity of point one light.” That should bring Duellos’s formation edge on against the Syndics if they kept heading for the auxiliaries. “Formation Fox Five Three, alter course one zero to port and two zero down at time four zero and increase velocity to point one light. Formation Fox Five Four, alter course one five to port and one zero down at time four zero and hold present velocity.” Which should bring the two lighter formations in from where they were sweeping up crippled Syndic strays, so they could rake across the flanks of the remnants of the Syndic formation, and where they could do the most damage to any Syndic ships having trouble staying in formation.

  He couldn’t help glaring at Numos’s formation, even though he’d realized he could use its position to his advantage. “Formation Fox Five Two, adjust course starboard three zero, down zero point five and increase velocity to point one light at time four zero. Roll formation axis six zero to port.” If the Syndics tried to run
for some of the other jump points on the other side of the system they’d have to veer off toward the inner system of Kaliban. The odds of them making that long a run were slim anyway, but now if they tried that, Numos’s ships should be able to intercept their track and rake them as they ran.

  If they didn’t try to run, Geary’s other formations would hit them in quick succession.

  He sat back, breathing heavily as if he’d just physically exerted himself, knowing he’d have to just watch for a while and see what happened. It would be perhaps a half hour before the formations swept into contact again.

  “Captain Geary?” Geary looked back to see Co-President Rione still on the bridge, apparently calm, but her eyes very alert. “Do you have one moment?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Geary flashed a tense smile. “It’ll be at least a few minutes until I can tell if everyone’s following orders and if the Syndics are doing anything unexpected. It’s a very old military dilemma. Hurry up and wait.”

  “Could you explain something for me, then?” She gestured around vaguely. “You gave orders in terms of ‘up’ and ‘down,’ ‘port’ and ‘starboard,’ yet the ships of your fleet are in a wide range of aspects. You are upside down relative to the ships in Captain Tulev’s force, for example. How do they know which way you mean?”

  Desjani, unseen by Rione, rolled her eyes at the Co-President’s ignorance, but Geary just pointed at the display. “It’s a standard convention, Madam Co-President, one every sailor learns by heart. It had to be established to provide a common frame of reference in an unbounded three-dimensional environment.” He sketched the shape of Kaliban’s system. “Every star system has a plane in which its planets or other objects orbit. One side of that plane is labeled ‘up,’ and the other side ‘down.’ So up and down within the system doesn’t change regardless of how your ship is oriented. By the same token, the direction toward the star is ‘starboard’ while the direction away from the star is ‘port.’ ” Geary shrugged. “I’ve been told that early on they tried to use ‘starward’ instead of ‘starboard,’ but the older expression stuck.”

  “I see. You take your orientation from the outside, not from yourself or from the aspect of the ship.”

  “It’s the only way it could work. Otherwise, no two ships could be counted on to figure out what the other one meant by directions.”

  “What if you meet outside a star system? Where there is no such reference?”

  Desjani looked startled. Geary also felt a shock of surprise at the question. But, then, how could Rione know better? “It doesn’t happen. How could two ships meet up in interstellar space? Why would they be there, too far from the nearest star to use it for reference? Why would two ships, or fleets, fight where there was no reason to fight? Nothing to defend, nothing to attack, no jump points or hypernet gates. The weaker side could just run away indefinitely.”

  Rione stared back, her own surprise visible. “You always choose to fight?”

  “You saw what happened at Corvus. We just kept going, and the Syndics couldn’t catch us before we left. Space, even within star systems, is too big, and ships are still far too slow relative to that, for combat to be forced if one side refuses to engage and can’t be blocked from running. If we’d wanted to defend a planet in Corvus or deny use of its jump points, we’d have had to stay and fight, but that wasn’t the case.”

  Rione’s stare shifted to the display. “As you chose to fight here.”

  “That’s right. If we’d run instead, the Syndics wouldn’t have caught us.” And it increasingly looks like I made the right decision to fight. Don’t get too cocky, Geary. It’s not over yet. But we’ve done a tremendous amount of damage to them. He checked the information on his display. “They’re still headed for our auxiliaries.”

  “You don’t seem worried.”

  “No. If they’d immediately scattered and run after their pass through us, some of them might’ve gotten away. But now they’ve given me time to bring my ships back at them.” He didn’t add something that he knew to be true. The fate of the Syndic force had been sealed. All of those Syndic ships would be destroyed in the near future.

  Desjani pointed at her display, emphasizing something to Geary. Geary’s orders to formation Fox Five Five had forced the Syndic formation to alter course to keep closing on the auxiliaries and their escorts. As it did so, the Syndic wrecks and ships that were too heavily damaged to maneuver kept going along the old course, gradually separating from their less-damaged comrades. The Syndic formation had begun to look as if it were melting, the increasingly disordered hulls of the wrecks and badly damaged ships spreading onward and outward while the remaining warships headed down, still in their rectangular block, which had lost a third of its length when the Syndic van was annihilated, and contained large ragged gaps where lost ships had once been.

  He became aware Rione was watching, too, as the two groups of Syndic ships separated, the still-functioning warships continuing on their doomed charge while the wrecks diverged from their original course. “I’ve seen detailed reports of space battles, Captain Geary. Why haven’t I seen one like this?”

  “It’s not over yet, Madam Co-President.”

  “I’m aware of that. But this formation you used, the way you ordered your ships to move and fight. I haven’t seen that. Why?”

  This time Desjani smiled at Geary, and he knew she’d declare him to be the greatest fleet commander of all time unless he answered the question himself. “Fox Five, and formations like it, haven’t been used for a long time. It took me a while to figure out why. It’s because it requires a special kind of training and experience with judging exactly when to transmit orders to forces deployed across light-minutes of space, when to have those orders take effect, how to compensate for the small, but real, relativistic distortions that can creep into coordinated time lines, how to estimate what the enemy must be doing based on time-late visual images that vary depending on which part of the enemy formation you’re looking at.” He remembered a show he’d once attended. “Think of it as a ballet in four dimensions, with the different parts staggered through different layers of time delays in seeing and communicating with them.”

  Rione didn’t bother trying to hide her reaction. “Very impressive. How did you learn this skill?”

  Geary exhaled slowly before answering. “I learned how to do it from old hands, officers who’d trained at it for decades.”

  It took her a moment to connect the dots. “All of whom are dead now.”

  “Yes.” He gave her a flat look. “Everyone those officers trained died in battle. The officers that group had started to train also died.”

  “I see. Like a trade secret in the world of peace. If those who know it die before passing on their skills, the chain of expert knowledge and experience is broken. The craft is lost and must be reinvented if it is to be seen again.”

  Geary simply nodded in reply this time. For decades there’d been no one left who knew the tricks and the methods. So the fleet had been forced to fall back on simple formations using simple tactics. Until I came back, like some ancient general who remembers ways of fighting that the barbarians forgot long ago.

  There was nothing to do for a few minutes but watch the Alliance formations converge on the Syndics, with occasional glances at the fleet status information to see how much damage his ships had taken, as well as the latest estimates of Syndic damage and losses. So far, the two sides of the ledger were grossly unbalanced in the Alliance’s favor.

  “Captain Geary, this is Captain Numos. I demand that the ships under my command be allowed to engage the enemy!”

  Desjani managed to convert a laugh into a cough, then carefully avoided betraying any other emotion.

  Geary grabbed for his communications controls, then stopped himself and took a few moments to think before he reached again, then spoke with a bland tone. “Captain Numos, your formation is playing an important role in this battle by blocking any Syndic retreat. Since your formatio
n, along with Fox Five One initiated contact with the enemy in this battle, I fail to understand your implication that your ships have not engaged the enemy.”

  There was a pause before the reply came, Numos’s voice this time cold instead of heated. “You have deliberately placed the ships under my command in positions where they had the least chance to engage the enemy.”

  “No, Captain Numos.” Geary realized with some surprise that his voice had remained level and calm. “I ordered your formation into an attack that would’ve resulted in substantial engagements for all of the ships in that formation. Unfortunately, my orders were not followed, with the result that the formation you command found itself out of position and out of the action. If you wish to complain about your current position relative to the battle, Captain Numos, I suggest you direct your complaints to the officer in command of Formation Fox Five Two. I believe you will find him on Orion.” He cut the link to Numos, not wanting further distraction.

  Captain Desjani made a small pointing gesture, her expression still controlled. “I believe that conversation was somehow accidentally carried out on a fleetwide communications circuit instead of a private command circuit. How unfortunate.”

  Geary glanced down to check, then shook his head. “Numos actually called me on a fleetwide circuit? Did he think I’d just let him claim his honor had been besmirched and not point out that he’s the one responsible for where Fox Five Two is right now?”

  “Yes, sir, I believe he did think that.”

  “Well, damn.” Desjani gave Geary a surprised look. “I know Numos deserved to get chewed out, Tanya, but I was always taught to chew out in private and praise in public.”

  “I see.” But Desjani shook her head. “Normally, I’d agree, but in this case, the charges would’ve otherwise been whispered in quarters where you’d have been unaware of them even as they served to undermine your authority. It’s best that Numos’s charges were rebutted so clearly and so publicly.”