Lost Fleet 3 -Courageous

by Jack Campbell

  Geary just nodded, thinking that of course Duellos would remain loyal to the government. “Is Badaya right? Would most of the fleet back such a move by me? I’m hoping you’ll say no.”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t say that. Most likely two-thirds of the fleet would accept you as dictator, though the exact reasons might vary from captain to captain.” Duellos looked away for a moment. “And of those captains who wouldn’t back the move, at least some would be deposed by their crews in favor of anyone you appointed.”

  Geary rubbed his forehead with both hands, trying to think. “I don’t even want to ask Colonel Carabali for fear she’ll believe I’m sounding her out.”

  “The Marines?” Duellos frowned in concentration. “Now, there’s a wild card. Great personal loyalty to you, no doubt, but their loyalty to the Alliance is legendary.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. If the crews go for you, there aren’t enough Marines to overwhelm them.”

  “I can’t believe I’m talking about this.” Geary shook his head, walking slowly to one side of the room and then back. He had to make a firm stand on this, both on the outside and in his own mind. “I won’t accept Badaya’s offer.”

  Duellos smiled. “Good. Not that I believed you would, but the stakes are so high, it feels comforting to be told so directly. I wouldn’t want to be on the opposite side from you.”

  “That makes two of us,” Geary replied with his own smile. “I think we’ll always be on the same side.”

  “Tanya Desjani would follow you. She’d be torn, but she’d be loyal to you.”

  “Why are you telling me that?”

  “Because I don’t think you’d ever ask her to break her oath, and she surely wouldn’t under any other conditions, but I wanted you to know that she would do what you asked.”

  “Thanks.” Though Geary wasn’t sure why Duellos had wanted him to know that. “How do you feel about going to Lakota now? Still worried?”

  Duellos smiled slightly again. “Aren’t you? It’s a risk. Anyplace we go from here is a risk. I think it’s a risk worth taking. Sooner or later, no matter how well we guess and plan, our luck will run out, and this fleet will find itself in serious trouble. We might as well die like warriors reaching for the stars rather than like mice hiding in shadows.”

  “Even if there’s a lot of Syndics at Lakota, that doesn’t mean this fleet will die.”

  “Hopefully not. But if it does, you’ve helped us even the odds after the disaster in the Syndic home system. If we take enough Syndics with us when we go, the Alliance will still have a chance.” Duellos saluted. “I’ll see you in Lakota.”

  “WE’VE got company, sir.”

  Geary jerked awake in his darkened stateroom at the sound of Desjani’s voice, slapping the comm panel to acknowledge the message. “How many?”

  “Eight Syndic capital ships have arrived in Ixion via the jump point from Dansik. Four battleships and four battle cruisers, accompanied by six heavy cruisers and a standard mix of light cruisers and HuKs. They’re about two light-hours distant, relative bearing off of our starboard beam, moving at about point one light as of two hours ago.”

  “They’ve probably turned toward us since then.”

  “Yes, sir. Here it is. We’re seeing the turn start now, but I don’t think they’ll try an intercept. We’re four hours and ten minutes from arrival at the jump point to Lakota.”

  “No,” Geary agreed. At point one light just covering two light-hours’ distance would take twenty hours. Since the Syndics were coming toward the Alliance fleet at an angle as the Alliance ships kept moving, the distance to be covered would be even greater. “They’ll trail us through whatever jump exit we use and come in behind us there.” The enemy had been sighted, but there was absolutely nothing to do about it. Turning his own fleet to intercept the Syndics would be worse than useless, since the new flotilla would simply avoid action while awaiting more reinforcements. “Thanks for the information. Continue on course for the jump point to Lakota.”

  “Yes, sir,” Desjani replied.

  He lay back down, feeling guilty. Desjani was on the bridge, monitoring the situation and watching the enemy, while he was in his stateroom in bed. Of course there was nothing he could do on the bridge, but it still felt wrong.

  One of Rione’s hands snaked slowly over his chest. “They’ll be coming after us to Lakota?” she murmured in his ear.

  “Yeah. Sorry that woke you.”

  “That’s all right. You’ll probably have trouble getting back to sleep.” Her hand slid lower. “There’s no sense in wasting us both being awake, is there?”

  News of Syndic warships arriving in this star system didn’t seem to have upset Rione. Or maybe she was trying to distract him from his worries. Or maybe she was still very worried about what would happen at Lakota and really didn’t want to waste any opportunities together.

  After a few moments, he stopped caring about her motivation.

  GEARY sat on the bridge of Dauntless, eyeing the display showing his fleet. He’d arranged it in an old formation known as Echo Five, consisting of five subformations resembling coins, each a disk facing forward with a little depth to it. Leading the fleet was Echo Five One, built around the remnants of Captain Cresida’s Fifth Battle Cruiser Division plus the understrength Seventh Battle Cruiser Division. Two battle cruiser divisions totaling only five ships combined. That was depressing if he dared think about it. With the heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers attached, the vanguard had decent fighting capability.

  On either side of the main body sat Echo Five Two and Five Three, Five Two containing the eight battle cruisers of the First and Second Divisions plus plenty of lighter units, while Five Three was built around the eight battleships of the Second and Fifth Divisions plus lighter support. In the rear of the fleet, Echo Five Five contained the four auxiliaries, the damaged warships with them including Warrior, Orion, and Majestic, plus Indefatigable, Defiant, and Audacious from the Seventh Battleship Division.

  The remaining five battle cruisers, including Dauntless, the thirteen other battleships, and the two scout battleships, formed the core of the main body in Fox Five Four, the rest of the heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers escorting them. Taken all in all, the Alliance fleet should be able to handle anything it encountered coming out of the jump exit at Lakota.

  “All units have slowed to point zero four light speed,” Captain Desjani reported. “All units report prepared to jump.”

  Geary nodded slowly, hoping he wasn’t finally making the mistake he’d dreaded since assuming command of this fleet. “All units, be prepared for combat upon exiting jump at Lakota. All units, jump now.”

  EIGHT

  FIVE and a half days to Lakota. Another five and a half days of staring at the endless gray nothingness of jump space.

  “Are you all right?” Rione asked him.

  “Worried,” Geary replied, keeping his eyes on the display.

  She sat down next to him, her own gaze going to the display. “So tell me, how was it in the lights of jump space?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m not entirely joking, you know.” Rione took a deep breath. “Do you remember anything?”

  He glanced at her. “You mean from survival sleep?”

  “Yes. A hundred years. There aren’t a lot of people who’ve been kept suspended that long and lived. Only one I know of, actually.”

  “Lucky me.” Geary thought about the question. “I don’t honestly know. Sometimes I think I remember dreams, but those could be memories of dreams before the battle at Grendel. I jumped into the escape pod as my ship was about to blow up without time to have thought about the battle or what had happened, and when the doctors in this fleet woke me up, it was as if I’d only been asleep for a few moments. I didn’t believe them at first. Thought it was some Syndic trick. I couldn’t believe that everyone I’d ever known was dead, everything I’d known lost a hundred years in the past.”

 
“And then you found out you’d become Black Jack Geary, mythical hero of the Alliance,” Rione added softly.

  “Yeah. The only thing that saved me was having to take command of this fleet. It forced me to pull out of my defensive shell.” He remembered the ice that had once filled him, the cold that had tried to wall out the world around him. “If not for that…” Geary shook his head.

  “Lucky us, lucky you,” Rione noted.

  “And are you lucky?” he asked.

  “Me?” Rione sighed. “I wonder if my husband is one of those lights. I wonder what my ancestors think of me. I wonder what Lakota holds, and what will happen to the Alliance. Is that luck, to live in such times and face such issues?”

  “Not good luck.”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  AT least there was always paperwork to fill the time, to distract him from worries about whatever waited at Lakota, though so very little paperwork actually got printed on paper that he wondered where the name had come from. Geary frowned down at a message from Furious. Routine administrative personnel transfers between ships shouldn’t be sent to him even as an information copy. He’d be buried in paperwork if that started happening.

  Then he read the name on the transfer and called Captain Desjani. “I’ve got a transfer order from Furious and—”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be right down to discuss it, sir.”

  Geary waited, wondering what was going on now, until Captain Desjani arrived. He waved her to a seat, where she sat at attention as usual. Since the rumors of something between them had started, Geary had stopped asking her to relax. He wondered if the transfer order was somehow related to those rumors. “This is an order to transfer Lieutenant Casell Riva from Furious to the Vambrace.”

  Desjani’s expression didn’t change as she nodded. “A heavy cruiser may suit him better, but the needs of the fleet take priority in any event.”

  “I see.” No, I don’t. “Were you aware of this?”

  “Captain Cresida had informed me that she intended transferring Lieutenant Riva, sir.”

  “And you’re fine with that?”

  “Sir, I can’t concern myself with the fates of junior officers on other ships.”

  Geary tried not to let his surprise show. “Normally that would be true. I shouldn’t be worried about it, either, except that the last I heard, you had hopes that you and Lieutenant Riva would be able to reestablish a personal relationship.” How long had it been since he’d talked to Desjani about that? He wasn’t sure. So much time devoted to his own relationship with Rione and all the emotional fallout from that, plus the rumors of involvement with Desjani. It had obviously been too long since he’d expressed any interest in how Desjani’s own life was going.

  Desjani shrugged. “Co-President Rione and I do have some things in common, sir.”

  That came as a surprise to Geary.

  She must have read his expression, because Desjani spoke carefully. “Ghosts from our pasts, churning up old emotions and leaving personal wreckage in their wake.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought you and Lieutenant Riva—”

  Desjani shook her head. “Lieutenant Riva developed a strong interest in a fellow officer on Furious, and he chose to act on that interest.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Yes, sir. Captain Cresida had to come down hard on him for violating good order and discipline. Which is how I heard of it. Lieutenant Riva had not seen fit to inform me of his new interest.”

  Lieutenant Casell Riva obviously wasn’t “Casell” to Desjani anymore, not that Geary could blame her. Hell. And I’m the one who suggested to Desjani that she send Riva to a ship like Furious. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged again as if unconcerned. “It’s his loss, sir.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “It’s odd, though,” Desjani continued, her eyes looking past Geary. “At times I felt it was as if Lieutenant Riva had been in survival sleep the entire time he was imprisoned. He had stayed the same, his career and his life on hold, locked in the places where they had been when he was captured, just as he was physically locked inside the Syndic labor camp. Everything about him except his age was the same as I remembered.” She paused, thinking. “Once he got over the shock of being rescued, of finding me alive, I think it began to bother him that I had changed. I wasn’t the lieutenant he’d last seen, the lieutenant he’d remembered during his captivity.”

  “If he spent that much time thinking about you in camp, I’m surprised he didn’t stay faithful once he got out.”

  Desjani grinned without humor. “I didn’t say he was faithful to my memory, sir. There were a lot of women in that camp. Lieutenant Riva availed himself of temporary relationships. He admitted that to me, and I didn’t blame him, though I should have wondered why all of the relationships were temporary.”

  “Was he jealous, do you think?” Geary asked. “Of you being a captain, and having your own ship?”

  “I began to sense that, too. It frustrated Lieutenant Riva to see so many officers younger than him who outranked him. I told him promotion would likely come rapidly, but he seemed to feel it should be now, that he should somehow fast-forward until he caught up with the world that had moved on without him.” Desjani’s mouth twisted. “The officer he took up with on Furious was an ensign not much more than half his age.”

  “That’s usually not a smart way for a man to boost his ego,” Geary observed. “Well, I’m still sorry.”

  Desjani really did smile slightly this time. “I think I deserve better than him, sir.”

  “There’s no doubt of that at all. Thank you, Tanya. Sorry I bothered you with this.”

  “I appreciate your concern, sir.” Desjani’s smile turned rueful. “I should know better than to expect room in my life for a relationship. I already have a full-time commitment with a lady named Dauntless who demands all of my attention.”

  “I know that feeling,” Geary agreed. “Being a commanding officer doesn’t leave much room for a life. You’re a good captain, though.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Desjani stood and turned to go, then faced him again. “Sir, may I ask a personal question?”

  “You’ve earned the right to that,” Geary observed. “We’ve been talking about your personal life. What is it?”

  “How are you and Co-President Rione?”

  Geary wasn’t sure which expression was appropriate and thought he ended up sort of smiling and lightly frowning simultaneously. “We’re doing all right, I think.”

  “I…was surprised, sir. I didn’t expect her to go back to you.”

  He nodded this time. “Me, too.”

  Desjani hesitated. “Do you care for her, sir?”

  “I think so.” Geary laughed shortly. “Hell, I don’t know. I think so.”

  “And does she care for you?”

  “I’m not sure.” If there was anyone who Geary could be open with about that, it was surely Desjani. “I don’t know. She doesn’t give a lot of clues to what she’s feeling.”

  “She did once, sir,” Desjani stated quietly. “I can’t tell you what Co-President Rione is feeling right now, but I don’t think discovering that her husband might be alive would have struck her so hard if she had felt nothing for you. That’s just my opinion, of course.”

  It wasn’t something that Geary had considered before. “Thanks for mentioning that. I can’t always…well…”

  “Can’t always know if she’s telling the truth?” Desjani asked with a slight smile.

  Geary smiled back at her. “Yeah. Rione’s a politician, but then I knew that going in.”

  “Some politicians are worse than others, which means some must be better than others. And bad as politicians may be, there are worse professions.”

  “Are there? Well, sure, like lawyers.”

  “Yes, sir,” Desjani agreed. “Or literary agents. I might have become one.”

  “You’re kidding.” Geary stared at her, trying to imagine the captain
of Dauntless sitting at a desk somewhere on a planet, reading and selling tales of adventure instead of living them.

  “My uncle offered me a job with his agency before I joined the fleet,” Desjani explained. “But aside from everything else, taking that job would have meant I had to work with writers, and you know what they’re like.”

  “I’ve heard stories.” Geary couldn’t suppress a grin. “Is that one you just told me true?”

  Desjani smiled back. “Perhaps, sir.”

  She left, but Geary sat watching the closed hatch for a while. It was nice to be able to relax a bit with Desjani. She shared experiences with him, some of those born of separate careers in the fleet, which, though one hundred years apart, still had the common elements every officer and sailor had dealt with from the beginnings of the human race. Others sprang from their time on this ship together, dealing with the strains of command, of fighting alongside each other. It was, Geary realized, easy to talk to Desjani.

  I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been in command of Desjani and still been on this ship, if we hadn’t been constrained by duty and honor…

  Don’t even go there. Don’t even start to consider that. That’s not how it happened, and that’s not how it can ever happen.

  HE woke up knowing it was not long after midnight of the ship’s day. Ideally, the fleet would arrive at Lakota at some reasonable hour when everyone had the benefit of a good night’s sleep and a leisurely breakfast. Assuming anyone could get a good night’s sleep the night before arriving in an enemy system holding an unknown number of enemy warships, or stomach breakfast when their nerves were knotted over the thought of impending combat. Still, the opportunity to do those things would have been nice.

  But even though humanity had figured out how to break some rules of the universe under certain circumstances, like using the jump drives to travel faster than light between stars, the ways to break rules had their own rules. Traveling in jump space between Ixion and Lakota took a certain amount of time, no more and no less. The Alliance fleet would emerge into normal space again at the jump exit in Lakota at about zero four hundred in the morning on the day/night schedules the ships maintained to keep human biorhythms happy.