Lost Fleet 3 -Courageous

by Jack Campbell

  “Yeah,” Geary agreed. He knew Rione was listening and wondering. “There’s another Syndic merchant ship almost at the jump point on the other side of the system. It’ll have time to see us before it jumps out and will carry that news to the Syndic authorities elsewhere.”

  “It’s a good thing we don’t intend to linger here,” Desjani added. “There’s nothing in Baldur that we need. It’s just another second-rate star system.”

  Geary nodded, his thoughts going back. Back a century, to before the war, to before he’d fought a desperate battle against the first Syndic surprise attack, before he’d barely escaped in a damaged survival pod to drift for a hundred years in survival sleep, before he’d found himself suddenly in command of a fleet whose survival depended on him. Back when he was just John Geary, a typical fleet officer, not the mythical hero Black Jack Geary, who these descendants of the people he’d known had been taught to believe could do anything. “People used to go to Baldur before the war,” he remarked in an almost absentminded way. “Tourists, even from the Alliance.”

  Desjani stared at him in amazement. “Tourists?” After a century of bitter warfare, the idea of pleasure trips into what had been enemy territory for her entire life seemed to be incomprehensible to her.

  “Yeah.” Geary shifted his gaze to the display of the primary inhabited world. “There’s some spectacular scenery down there. Even with all the worlds humanity has settled, there was something unique about it, something you had to be there to appreciate. That’s what everyone said, anyway.”

  “Unique?” Desjani sounded simply doubtful now.

  “Yeah,” Geary repeated. “I saw an interview with someone who had been there. He said there was something awesome about it, like your ancestors came to stand beside you while you looked around. Maybe something happened to it, though, since Baldur didn’t get a hypernet gate.” He glanced over at Desjani, who still seemed baffled but also, as usual, willing to take the word of a man she believed had been sent by the living stars to save the Alliance.

  She indicated her display. “Do you want to avoid bombarding the primary planet, then?”

  Geary almost choked. After a century of trading atrocities with the Syndics, even Alliance officers could be remarkably cold-blooded. “Yes,” he managed to get out. “If at all possible.”

  “Very well,” Desjani agreed. “The military facilities seem to be primarily orbital, so if we have to take them out, it won’t require surface bombardment.”

  “That’s convenient,” Geary agreed dryly. He settled back, trying to relax nerves that had been on edge as the fleet entered Baldur.

  “Syndic combatants identified orbiting the third planet,” Dauntless’s combat watch-stander announced as if on cue. “An additional Syndic combatant has been located in spacedock orbiting the fourth planet.”

  Geary, hoping he hadn’t too obviously jerked to attention at the announcement, zoomed his display in on the enemy ships. Anything that hadn’t been seen until now had to be pretty small. They were. “Three obsolete nickel corvettes and an even older light cruiser.” The cruiser was older than him, too, Geary reflected. And here we both are still fighting a war far beyond the time either of us ever planned on. At least I’m in better physical shape than that ancient cruiser probably is.

  “Five and a half light-hours distant,” Desjani confirmed. “Orbiting between the third and fourth planets. They’ll see us in roughly five more hours.” She smiled. “They obviously weren’t expecting us.”

  Geary smiled back, feeling relieved. Every time the fleet left jump, he had to worry about encountering a Syndic ambush. The only way to avoid that was to keep the Syndic leadership guessing as to where the fleet would be next. The lack of even picket warships posted near Baldur’s jump points meant the Syndics had no idea the Alliance fleet would be showing up here, or at least hadn’t figured it out as a possible destination in time to get a courier ship to this star system. “Odds are they’ll run, then. If they don’t run, I want an analysis of what they might be concerned with protecting.”

  “Yes, sir,” Desjani acknowledged, gesturing to one of her watch-standers. “Is there something else, sir?”

  “What?” Geary realized he was staring tensely at the display and deliberately relaxed his breathing again. “No.”

  But Desjani had figured out his worry. “The fleet seems to be holding formation.”

  “Yes.” Seems to be. If any of the outermost combatants took it into their minds to charge toward the Syndic warships, Dauntless wouldn’t see it for almost half a minute. But everyone appeared to be holding formation. “Maybe what I’m trying to show the officers in this fleet about discipline in battle is really getting through to everyone.” That was a cheerful thought.

  Rione promptly threw a bucket of reality over him. “Or maybe they’re holding formation because the Syndic combatants are five and a half light-hours distant. Even at full acceleration, an attempted intercept would take quite a while.”

  Desjani gave Rione another cool look as she had the navigation system run the intercept. “If the Syndics held course and didn’t run, an intercept would require about twenty-five hours at maximum acceleration and deceleration,” she confirmed reluctantly. “But I assure you, Madam Co-President, that before Captain Geary assumed command, we would still have had ships already launching themselves on that charge.”

  Rione smiled thinly and nodded. “I have no reason to doubt your assessment, Captain Desjani.”

  “Thank you, Madam Co-President.”

  “No, thank you, Captain.”

  Geary took a moment to be grateful that his officers didn’t wear ceremonial swords. From the look in Desjani’s eyes, Rione should be grateful for that as well. “All right,” he announced out loud to distract the two women. “To all appearances, this star system is totally unprepared for our arrival. That means we should have a chance to intimidate them into avoiding doing anything stupid.” Desjani nodded immediately, followed a noticeable few seconds later by Rione. “Captain Desjani, please broadcast to all Syndic installations that any actions taken to hinder or attack this fleet will be met with overwhelming force.”

  “Yes, sir. With your name on the end?”

  “Yeah.” Geary had never aspired to have a name that would frighten people, but apparently more than a few Syndics also believed in the legendary Alliance hero, Black Jack.

  Victoria Rione spoke again. “Your messages are usually longer.”

  Geary shrugged. “I’m trying something different. They’ll have no idea what our intentions are, which will keep them guessing and worried. Maybe enough so that they’ll sit tight and not try to mess with us.” Not that I’m planning on doing anything but getting to the next jump point. He studied the display, seeing the course leading to the jump point for Wendaya as a long arc passing above the plane of the Baldur Star System. The fleet wouldn’t have to go anywhere near any Syndic installations, and the Syndics didn’t have anything in-system that could be used to go after the fleet.

  It all looked so perfect that Geary found himself double-checking, unwilling to trust a situation without an overt threat.

  But nothing looked wrong. He finally relaxed again, pondering his formation, then calling up the individual ship status readouts. Very little information could be exchanged in jump space, but ever since the fleet had arrived here, automatic reports had been flowing in to Dauntless with information on the current state of every ship. If Geary had been so inclined, he could’ve found out exactly how many sailors on any one particular ship had head colds at the moment. He had known commanders who had concentrated on things like that, somehow expecting the business of actually running the fleet to happen on its own while they dug ever deeper into trivial details.

  What he was seeing wasn’t trivial, though. Geary couldn’t prevent a gasp of exasperation as he looked at the primary status readouts, drawing glances from the others on the bridge. “Logistics,” he explained very briefly to Desjani.

  S
he nodded. “Dauntless is getting below recommended fuel cell reserves, too.”

  “I knew that. I didn’t appreciate how much of the rest of the fleet was also at or below those levels.” Geary shook his head as he checked another report. “And expendable munitions. We used a lot of mines at Sancere and Ilion, and specter missile stockpiles are low on most ships.” He leaned back again, taking a long, calming breath. “Thank the living stars for the auxiliaries. Without them along to manufacture new fuel cells and weaponry, this fleet would have been trapped and helpless a few star systems back.”

  That simplified his plans for getting through Baldur Star System. Keep the fleet close together, keep fuel expenditures to a minimum, avoid using weapons, and give the auxiliaries plenty of time to replenish the fuel and munitions supplies on the warships.

  Geary’s feeling of satisfaction vanished as he checked the status of the four fast fleet auxiliaries, which weren’t fast except in the imaginations of whoever had chosen that name for them. Difficult to protect and slow as they were, the self-propelled manufacturing facilities called auxiliaries were vital to getting this fleet home. As long as they could keep the fleet supplied, that is. “Why am I seeing critical shortage reports on the auxiliaries?” Geary wondered out loud. “We looted every raw material we could possibly use back at Sancere. The auxiliaries’ supply bunkers were supposed to have been topped off.”

  Desjani frowned and checked the figures herself. “According to these reports, all of the auxiliaries will have to stop manufacturing fuel cells and munitions soon due to shortages of critical materials. That doesn’t make sense. The auxiliaries certainly loaded a lot of something at Sancere.”

  The situation had looked too good to be true. So, of course, it had been. Muttering curses under his breath, Geary put in a call to the flagship of the auxiliaries division. Witch was a healthy fifteen light-seconds distant, causing a very aggravating delay in communications as the message crawled to the other ship at the speed of light, and the reply crawled back. Only in the vast distances of space did light seem slow.

  The image of Captain Tyrosian finally appeared, looking the very model of someone bearing bad news. But all she said was, “Yes, sir.”

  At least the delay in message times had given Geary time to phrase a diplomatic question. “Captain Tyrosian, I’m looking at the status reports for your ships. All of them show shortages of critical raw materials.”

  Another wait. Finally, Tyrosian’s image nodded unhappily. “Yes, sir, that is correct.”

  Geary fought down a grimace as it became clear that Tyrosian’s reply wasn’t more enlightening. “How is that possible? I thought all of the auxiliaries filled their stockpiles with raw materials at Sancere. How could we have ended up with shortages of critical materials this soon?”

  The seconds crawled by, too long to ignore and too brief to allow time to do anything else. Tyrosian looked even unhappier as she nodded again. “The reports are accurate, Captain Geary. I’ve been trying to determine the cause of the problem. I’m fairly certain it’s because of the shopping lists provided by the automated logistics system.”

  Another pause. Geary barely refrained from pounding the arm of his seat in frustration. “How could the automated systems have made such a serious misjudgment of which supplies the auxiliaries would need to manufacture items critical to this fleet? Didn’t your ships follow the recommendations from the logistics system?”

  He spent the time waiting for a reply imagining the sorts of things he could do to Captain Tyrosian for screwing up something this important. It didn’t help his temper that Tyrosian kept proving the old adage that engineers weren’t the best people in the world when it came to verbal communications. Tyrosian kept telling him things that left critical information out as if expecting he would know everything she did.

  When her reply came this time, Tyrosian spoke in the time-hallowed manner of engineers everywhere as they recited their professional opinions. “We did follow the system recommendations. That was the cause of the failure, Captain Geary. The systems provided flawed recommendations.”

  Geary hesitated, taken aback by the statement, despite his growing anger. “Explain that. Why would the systems have provided flawed recommendations? Are you saying the system was sabotaged somehow so that it didn’t provide good information?” The implications of that were very serious indeed. If the automated systems that helped run the fleet became unreliable or were somehow hacked, it could cripple the fleet as badly as a lack of fuel and weaponry.

  But Tyrosian shook her head as her reply eventually arrived. “No, sir. There wasn’t, and isn’t, anything wrong with the logistics systems. They’re functioning exactly as they should. The problem lies in the underlying assumptions the logistics system used in extrapolating the needs of the fleet.” She swallowed, clearly uncomfortable but bulling ahead with her report. “The logistics systems base future needs on projected usage and losses. Those projections are in turn constructed from historical patterns.”

  Tyrosian grimaced. “Under your command, the fleet hasn’t been experiencing usage of munitions or losses of ships in accordance with historical patterns. As a result, the logistics systems assumed we would have much fewer ships requiring resupply and that fewer munitions and fuel cells would be required.”

  It took Geary a moment to figure that out. “I should have been losing more ships every time we fought? I shouldn’t have been using so many munitions or maneuvering so much?”

  Seconds dragged by until Tyrosian nodded again. “Essentially, yes. We’ve been fighting more frequently and losing much fewer ships than called for by the underlying assumptions of the logistics systems. Battles have been more complex, requiring the use of more fuel cells. More long-range weapons have been used than is usually the case. None of us caught how that would change projected requirements. As a result, the logistics systems assumed a higher level of need for battle damage repair materials and a lower level for resupply of surviving ships. We have plenty of what we need to patch the holes in Warrior, Orion, and Majestic, but we’re short on some critical raw materials that are used in small quantities in things like fuel cells and specter missiles.”

  Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Accustomed as he was to the perversity of the universe, it was still astounding to realize that he was facing problems because he had been doing too well in battle. Geary looked over at Desjani. “We’re in trouble because the fleet hasn’t been losing enough ships when we fight.”

  To his surprise, Desjani took only a moment to figure it out. “We need to adapt the systems to you, sir. I should’ve realized that, too.”

  Geary gave her a grim smile. It was just like Desjani to immediately accept a measure of responsibility, whether she bore any or not. Unlike, say, Captain Tyrosian, who seemed at a loss on what to do, waiting expectantly for Geary’s orders and not offering any suggestions. “Tanya,” he asked, using Desjani’s first name to emphasize his confidence in her, “what do you recommend?”

  “All of the auxiliaries are low on the critical materials?” Desjani checked the detailed status reports again and rolled her eyes. Her feelings about engineers running ships were clear. Then again, practically every other one of Geary’s ship captains would agree with her on that count. “Jinn’s stockpiles of those materials are in slightly better shape than Witch’s,” Desjani noted out loud, “Goblin’s slightly worse, and Titan’s stockpiles are in about the same condition as those on Witch.” Geary tried not to think about all of the materials they had looted at Sancere, how easily they could have loaded much more of all of those critical materials. “We need more,” Desjani concluded.

  “So I assumed,” Geary replied, trying not to go ballistic on Desjani over the obviousness of her observation. “Where do we get it?”

  Desjani gestured to the system display. “The Syndics have mines in this star system, of course. They’ll have what we need.”

  Geary grinned with sudden relief. My mind was still stuck back in Sancere.
Thank our ancestors that Desjani’s was here in Baldur. “Madam Co-President,” he began.

  She forestalled his question, frowning. “We’ve encountered sabotage from the Syndics before, Captain Geary. Asking them for the materials we need, even letting them know we need them, could be a serious error. I don’t see any way diplomacy can be counted upon in this case.”

  Desjani reluctantly nodded in agreement. “That’s almost certainly correct, sir.”

  Geary pondered that, then faced the window where Tyrosian’s image waited. The engineering captain was visibly nervous but holding herself ready for the tonguelashing, or worse, she probably expected. The sight helped drain the anger from Geary. Maybe Tyrosian wasn’t the smartest or most capable officer in the fleet, but she knew her job, knew engineering, and had been a solid performer. She hadn’t foreseen the problem, but automated systems bred dependency in their users. Everyone knew that. He was lucky Tyrosian had been able to identify the problem instead of just blindly clinging to the flawed output from the logistics systems.

  So Geary forced himself to give Tyrosian a confident look, as if he had never doubted her ability to handle this. “Okay, to summarize, all four auxiliaries are facing serious shortages of a few critical raw materials. Unless we stock up on critical materials as soon as possible, we’ll have to cease production of vital components. Are those raw materials available in this system?” Remembering the increasingly annoying time delay in answers, he added a further question. “Would they be available at any particular locations among the mining activity we’ve spotted?”

  About thirty seconds later he saw Tyrosian’s face light up. “Yes, sir. Mining activity on asteroids and near the gas giants has already been detected and analyzed by the fleet’s sensors. The most likely location where we’d find what we need is…um…at this site on the fourth moon of the second gas giant.” A secondary window popped up, revealing the place that Tyrosian had designated.