Lost Fleet 3 -Courageous

by Jack Campbell

  Unfortunately for the Syndics, Geary’s second turn upward changed the angle of the engagement again, this time so close to the time of contact that the Syndic commander didn’t have time to see it and react. “All units, engage by squadrons and divisions with grapeshot and hell lances as targets enter engagement envelopes. Open fire when in range.” The order would ensure each squadron or division of Alliance ships targeted a single enemy ship, increasing the chances of getting enough hits during the instant in which the fleets would be close enough to fire on each other.

  “Enemy missiles and grapeshot passing beneath us,” the combat system watch reported gleefully as the Syndic barrage went where the Alliance fleet had been expected to be.

  Then the moment of contact came and passed. If human eyes and nervous systems were able to react quickly enough to perceive it, they would have seen the flat surfaces of the Alliance vanguard and main body coins sliding across the upper leading edge of the Syndic box, concentrating their fire repeatedly on the relatively few enemy ships in and near the edge, while the Syndics could only fire back with those same few ships at Alliance warships flashing past one after another. The coins of the flanking Alliance formations slid past the upper corners of the Syndic box, their fire even more concentrated.

  Geary blinked, wondering if he’d actually seen the flashes of weapons fire and hits during the fraction of a second in which the automated combat systems aimed and fired far faster than humans could have managed. As the Syndics and Alliance warships diverged now, watch-standers were calling out damage assessments on the enemy and damage reports from Alliance ships.

  “We hurt them,” Desjani noted.

  On the display, the remnants of two Syndic battle cruisers were falling away from the rest of the Syndic fleet, joined by the tumbling wrecks of a battleship, five heavy cruisers, and numerous broken light cruisers and HuKs. The escort forces on the upper edge of the Syndic formation had been virtually wiped out. Hits had been scored on other Syndic ships, but none critical.

  On the Alliance side, shields had been stressed and a few lighter units had taken hits. Thankfully, all of them could still keep up with the fleet.

  Geary nodded, giving orders he’d already prepared. “All formations, alter base course up one two zero degrees at time two four.” Less than a minute later, the Alliance formations rose up and over, bending into a partial C curve and inverting from their previous orientation.

  As Geary had expected, the Syndics, making their own attempt to swing back into contact, had also come up and over in a mirror image of the Alliance maneuver. Since the two fleets were turning together, the result was to once again bring the Alliance formations across a single edge of the Syndic box, this time the bottom leading edge. Unfortunately for the Syndic warships that had been in the upper leading edge of their box formation and taken the brunt of the first Alliance firing pass, they were now on the bottom leading edge as the Syndic formation also inverted when it came around.

  Once again the Alliance formations tore across the single edge and its corners of the Syndic formation, and once again the local superiority of firepower that created hurt the Syndics far more than they could hit back at the Alliance ships.

  “Two more Syndic battleships!” Desjani exulted. “And another of their battle cruisers dead!”

  “We took more hits that time, too.” Two destroyers, Assegai and Rapier, had lost their weapons but remained able to maneuver. Several light cruisers and a heavy cruiser had been battered, and a few shots had gotten through to some of the Alliance battle cruisers. Even as Geary gave his next orders, his eyes were watching one of those battle cruisers. “All formations turn down nine zero degrees at time three five.” The Alliance fleet began bending into a full S curve as the Syndics turned into them again as well.

  But one of the Alliance battle cruisers didn’t follow the maneuver, sliding out of the formation on a slowly twisting path that would take it across the path of the Syndic formation. “What happened to Renown?” Geary demanded.

  A watch-stander rapidly called up a re-creation of the last firing pass, playing it back slowly enough for human senses to observe. The Syndics had known the Alliance fleet’s path accurately this time and placed their grapeshot barrage in the right places. Renown, closest to the enemy on her side of one of the flanking formations, had caught several volleys, which had collapsed her forward shields. As combat systems automatically shifted power from the stern and beam shields, Syndic missiles had veered in on intercepts that came up Renown’s stern. The first three missiles had broken Renown’s weakened stern shields, then three more had totally taken out her main propulsion systems.

  Under the impacts of the Syndic hits, Renown fell back and off to the side as she lost the ability to stay with the Alliance formation.

  A single battle cruiser, no longer able to use the speed that was supposed to compensate for her weaker shields and armor, no longer surrounded by the protection of her comrades.

  “Renown reports estimated time to regain limited main propulsion is three zero minutes,” the combat watch reported.

  No one needed the maneuvering systems estimates to know that Renown wouldn’t have thirty minutes. The Syndic formation would sweep over her in only about ten more minutes.

  Geary breathed a prayer. Get the fleet around, get his ships turned so he could get back to the battle cruiser before the Syndics. He couldn’t possibly do it. Physics wouldn’t allow it.

  “What’s Paladin doing?” Desjani wondered aloud.

  Geary’s eyes jerked that way. At the very rear of the main body now, Paladin had seen Renown take hits to her propulsion system and had time to react. Now the battleship was arcing around in a turn so tight the inertial dampers on her must be screaming in protest.

  He couldn’t take the entire fleet in that tight a turn. The units at the edges of his formations had a lot farther to travel to make the turns than those near the center as the turns pivoted the ships around the formations’ central axes. The only way to try to match what Paladin was doing was to let his formations dissolve, which would be a prescription for disaster when the Syndics were still holding their formation.

  “Paladin,” Geary ordered in a harsh voice, “return to your position in the formation immediately.” He had to adjust his own fleet’s course as it curved down to match a slight slide to one side by the Syndics. “All formations, come right zero two degrees, time four one.”

  “What can we do?” Rione asked from the rear of the bridge, her voice not demanding but pleading.

  Geary didn’t have to ask to know the question was about Renown. “Nothing,” he replied in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “If I let this formation fall apart, we still probably won’t get enough ships there in time to save her, and we’d definitely end up losing a lot more ships than Renown.”

  “Renown reports she has ordered all nonessential personnel to escape pods,” Dauntless’s combat watch reported.

  Geary nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He’d given the same order, a hundred years ago, a few months ago to him, at Grendel.

  Desjani gave him an anguished look but said nothing.

  Paladin kept coming around in a turn clearly aimed now at Renown as the rest of the Alliance fleet bent into its own down and over maneuver, turning as one to reverse the course of all of its ships except Renown and Paladin.

  “Paladin!” Geary yelled, not caring if he sounded unprofessionally angry during the battle. “Return to the formation immediately! Captain Midea is relieved of command. Executive officer, assume command and return Paladin to formation!”

  It was probably too late. It was certainly too late. At the velocities the ships were traveling, Paladin had already veered too far from the rest of the Alliance fleet, and the Syndics were coming around to cross under the main body of the Alliance fleet but directly at Renown and Paladin.

  Renown volleyed out waves of escape pods and all of her remaining specters as the leading edge of the Syndic formation
approached. Her last grapeshot followed, sparkling as it hit the shields of Syndic ships and vaporized. One, then two, Syndic HuKs fell silent as Renown’s weapons ripped into them. A light cruiser reeled away. The shields on a battle cruiser flared and failed in spots, letting some of Renown’s hell lances score hits on the enemy warship.

  But an avalanche of fire was falling upon Renown. Her shields failed, her weak armor was penetrated in a hundred places, her hell-lance batteries fell silent as the stricken battle cruiser jerked and tumbled helplessly from the impacts of Syndic fire.

  “No systems detected still active on Renown,” a watch-stander reported in a calm but trembling voice. “Renown’s emergency beacon has lit off. Her surviving crew is abandoning ship.”

  Geary had been there, too. Hoping a functioning escape pod still existed, racing through once-familiar passageways of his ship grown foreign from massive damage, the enemy weapons still tearing into his mortally wounded ship.

  “Core overload set on Renown. Contact lost with Renown.”

  On the display, the battered hulk, which minutes before had been an Alliance battle cruiser, rolled silently away, her power core set to explode to deny her carcass to the enemy, the escape pods holding her crew mingling with those from the already destroyed Syndic warships.

  Too late to save Renown, Paladin came tearing past and above the shattered battle cruiser. Hell lances tore out from the battleship in volleys that ripped into Syndic HuKs scrambling to escape. Two HuKs exploded under the impacts, and one more disintegrated under the blows of Paladin’s hell lances. Then the lone Alliance battleship was in among the Syndic light cruisers, its powerful hell-lance batteries shattering the shields on two of the light cruisers, destroying one and crippling the other.

  A second later Paladin, her shields glowing now under an almost constant barrage of enemy fire, encountered Syndic heavy cruisers. Paladin’s own weapons tore open a single Syndic heavy cruiser as the battleship staggered onward directly toward a division of Syndic battleships.

  “Captain Midea is crazy, but she’s dying well,” Desjani remarked somberly.

  “Did she have to take her ship and crew with her?” Geary whispered in reply. Too late. Too late to relieve Midea. Too late to figure out how to control a reckless officer with a ship’s fate in her hands.

  “Paladin’s losing shields,” the watch reported.

  Geary could see that on his own display. Paladin’s lonely battle was far enough from the rest of the fleet by now that it took a few seconds for light from the fight to reach Dauntless. A lot could happen in a few seconds.

  It took less time than that for Paladin to charge straight into the Syndic battleship division she’d been aiming for, shuddering as enemy weapons ripped into her from all sides. But Paladin concentrated her own fire on a single battleship even as her hell-lance batteries started falling silent under the Syndic barrage. As Paladin and that Syndic battleship flashed past each other, Paladin fired her null field at the weakened bow shields of the enemy ship. Its already-stressed shields failed, and the null field penetrated into the Syndic battleship’s bow, digging a massive crater there.

  As the Syndic battleship reeled out of formation, crippled, Paladin shot through the rest of the Syndic formation, taking hit after hit, systems falling dead and pieces of armor and hull being blown off under the impact of Syndic hell lances, grapeshot, and missile fire.

  As Geary’s fleet came over the top of its turn and steadied on course for another pass at the Syndic flotilla, Paladin’s remains tumbled onward past the Syndics, the only sign of life on the wreck a few escape pods popping free.

  “We’ll avenge them,” Geary stated as the Alliance fleet steadied out to cross over the top of the Syndic formation again. But he’d misjudged slightly this time, maybe rattled by what was happening to Renown and Paladin, and the two groups of warships tore past each other at extreme hell-lance range, neither the Alliance nor the Syndics scoring any significant damage on the other.

  “We’ll get the Syndics on the next pass,” Desjani predicted, her face grim.

  “Yeah.” Geary took a deep breath, then transmitted his next orders. “All formations, turn up one one zero degrees, port zero one degrees at time five seven.” As the fleet came back around, it would invert again as the two formations wove back and forth toward each other in interlinked S curves. The Syndic commander should recognize that he couldn’t achieve a good firing pass unless he broke the pattern, but the Syndics wouldn’t break contact while they thought they had a chance to inflict damage back on the Alliance. They never had, stubbornly sticking to fights in misplaced displays of bravery and determination. In this fight, the Syndics had already been hurt a lot more than the Alliance, even after counting Renown and Paladin. By the time the Syndics decided to flee, they’d be too badly hurt for any major warship to get away.

  “Sir, activity at the hypernet gate!”

  Alerts pulsed on Geary’s display. His eyes went to the area of the Syndic hypernet gate even as a watch-stander began calling out the information in a breathless voice. “Syndic forces have been spotted emerging from the hypernet gate. Twenty Hunter-Killers. Update, twenty-eight Hunter-Killers. Twelve light cruisers. Update, forty-two Hunter-Killers, twenty-six light cruisers, eight heavy cruisers. Update, sixty-nine Hunter-Killers, thirty-one light cruisers, nineteen heavy cruisers.”

  Geary watched the enemy symbols multiplying madly at the hypernet gate, trying not to let his dismay show.

  “They’ve got a substantial number of escorts,” Desjani remarked with what Geary thought was remarkable calmness.

  Which implied a lot of capital ships.

  The display and the watch-stander confirmed that moments later. “Sixteen battle cruisers. Update, twenty battle cruisers. Twelve battleships. Update, twenty-three battleships.”

  Geary realized he hadn’t been breathing and inhaled. At least the threat symbols had stopped growing in number. He took a long moment to read the final assessment of the new Syndic force. Twenty-three battleships, twenty battle cruisers, nineteen heavy cruisers, thirty-one light cruisers, one hundred twelve Hunter-Killers.

  The odds in this star system had just gone from roughly even to very bad. In capital ships alone the Alliance fleet now had only twenty-five surviving battleships and seventeen surviving battle cruisers. The battle so far had taken out three Syndic battleships and four battle cruisers, but even after those losses, total Syndic capital ships at Lakota now added up to forty-four battleships and thirty-four battle cruisers, most of those fresh and presumably with full load-outs of expendable munitions, whereas the Alliance ships had used up most of their missiles and grapeshot already. Almost two-to-one odds, and no matter what anyone else in the Alliance fleet believed, Geary didn’t think that superior fighting spirit could make up for that kind of disparity in firepower.

  TEN

  “IT must be the main Syndic fleet,” Desjani observed, her body tense. “Their primary strike force. The Syndics in this system couldn’t have sent for reinforcements and had them show up this quickly, so they must have been headed here for some other reason.”

  “Lucky us,” Geary muttered. The hypernet gate was almost five light-hours away now, so that Syndic flotilla they were just now seeing had arrived five hours ago. But the Syndics in that new strike force had seen the Alliance fleet the moment they arrived, and had already had five hours to size up the situation and make plans. “We need to wipe out this flotilla we’re engaged with. Then we can—”

  “Syndic ships are turning away,” a watch-stander called in a disappointed voice.

  “Son of a bitch.” There wasn’t any doubt. Instead of curving back in for another firing pass, the Syndics they’d been fighting were continuing outward, accelerating past point one light to open the distance from the Alliance fleet even faster. Instead of closing on the Alliance fleet, the Syndics were now heading in another direction. “They’re breaking contact.”

  Along with light from the hypernet gate
had come orders for the Syndic ships they were engaged with. Geary was certain of it as he watched the Syndic flotilla accelerating away.

  “Cowards,” Desjani ground out, then shook her head. “No. They’ve been ordered to wait until that other big force gets close enough to engage us.”

  “Right.” Geary took a look at the geometry of the Alliance and the Syndic forces, then at his fleet’s fuel status. “We don’t have enough fuel cells to catch them without going to critically low levels.”

  “Jump to Branwyn!” Rione suddenly cried, as if unable to understand why someone else hadn’t already said that. “Proceed onward to the jump point and jump to Branwyn! We’ve inflicted more losses on the Syndics than they have on us, so there’s no dishonor in leaving the battlefield now!”

  Desjani just shook her head again.

  Geary looked back at Rione. “We can’t. That Syndic force that is breaking contact with us is going to stay close enough to come charging in if we head for that jump point. We have to slow down a lot to get past the minefield they laid and to the jump point. They’ll wait until we’re nearly at a dead stop to get around those mines, and then they’ll hit us.”

  “We’d be easy targets,” Desjani added in a tight voice.

  “We can’t outmaneuver them?” Rione demanded.

  This time Geary shook his head. “They don’t have auxiliaries with them slowing them down, and they can leave their damaged ships behind when they come at us, knowing that we can’t go after them. Even if we didn’t have the auxiliaries to worry about, we’d still have to keep our damaged ships with us.” He pointed at the display. “The Syndics we were fighting will keep us from using the jump point for Branwyn or hurt us very badly if we try to use it. Meanwhile, the big new Syndic flotilla will head for us, knowing we can’t escape through the nearest jump point without taking serious losses. When the newest force gets close enough, it and the one we were just fighting will hit us together.”