Valiant tlf-4

by Jack Campbell

  He glared at the deck. “I know. Why’d you tell me that when you knew you didn’t have to tell me that?”

  “Because you’re still focused on saving as much of this fleet as possible. You can’t forget the bigger picture. If it becomes a matter of losing Dauntless while trying to save as much of this fleet as you can, or getting Dauntless home no matter how many other Alliance ships are lost, your duty demands that you focus on Dauntless.”

  “I don’t need lectures on duty,” Geary muttered. Rione was right in a big way, he knew she was right, but it wasn’t a kind of right he could live with.

  “The other ships could hold off the Syndic pursuit force while a fast task force built around Dauntless was loaded with as many fuel cells as they could carry and headed for Alliance space,” Rione insisted, her voice unemotional.

  “Run away, you mean. You’re suggesting that Dauntless and a few other ships run and leave the rest of the fleet to its fate.”

  “Yes!” He looked at her again and saw in Rione’s eyes that she wasn’t liking what she suggested, either, but that she felt obligated to push for it. Duty. Her duty to the Alliance. “You have to remember the big picture, Captain John Geary! We all do! It’s not about what we want, it’s about what we have to do!”

  He dropped his gaze to the deck once more. “Whatever we have to do to win. We’re back to that, huh?” She didn’t answer. “I’m sorry, but I’m the wrong hero for that. I can’t do what you’re suggesting.”

  “There’s still time—”

  “I didn’t say it couldn’t be done, I said I can’t do it. I won’t abandon these other ships to their fates. I won’t allow the big picture to justify betraying the trust of the men and women who’ve placed their fates in my hands.”

  Rione sounded both pleading and angry. “They all took an oath to sacrifice for the Alliance.”

  “Yes, they did. So did I.” He finally looked at her again. “But I can’t do that, even if it costs the Alliance the war. The price would be too great.”

  Her anger grew. “We can pay any price that is necessary, Captain Geary. For our homes. For our families.”

  “I’m supposed to tell their families that? ‘People of the Alliance, I sacrificed your parents, your partners, your children, for you.’ How many people would really make that kind of bargain? Would anyone willing to make that bargain deserve to win?”

  “We all make it, every day! You know that! Every civilian makes that bargain when they send their military off to war! We know they’re risking their lives for us!”

  She was right about that, too. But not entirely. “They trust us not to waste those lives,” Geary stated heavily. “I will not trade the lives of the people of this fleet for a Syndic hypernet key. I will lead them and fight like hell to get that key home to Alliance space, but I will not write off the lives of my people as a necessary price for that. The moment I decide that any price is justified is the moment I betray my trust and what I see as my duty. We’ll win or we’ll die together, with honor.”

  Rione gazed back at him for a while, then shook her head. “Part of me is very angry with you, and part of me is very grateful that I couldn’t convince you. I’m not a monster, John Geary.”

  “I didn’t say you were.” He jerked his head toward his display, where the movements of the warships in this star system were clearly shown. “But a lot of people are going to die today because of my decisions now and in the past. Sometimes I wonder what that makes me.”

  “Look in the eyes of your comrades, Captain Geary,” Rione replied in a quiet voice. “The ones you wouldn’t leave. Reflected in those eyes you’ll see what you are.”

  Rione returned to her seat. Geary took a few deep breaths, noticing that Captain Desjani was acting totally absorbed in her own work. He wondered what she might have guessed about his and Rione’s conversation.

  As much to distract himself as because he needed to, Geary called Captain Cresida. “I’m going to order the auxiliaries to break away from the Syndic Casualty Flotilla in two hours. Until then they’re going to keep putting on a public display of frantically pulling everything they can off the Syndic ships.”

  Cresida nodded, only the rapidity of the gesture revealing her prebattle nerves. Those thirty-one Syndic battleships and thirteen battle cruisers were aimed straight at her force, and for protection of the auxiliaries she had only two battle cruisers, four battleships, of which three were in various states of disrepair, and a gaggle of escorts with varying degrees of damage. “We’ll cover the auxiliaries, but we’re going to need backup.”

  “It’ll be coming,” Geary promised. “Don’t let Furious and Implacable get into a slugging match with those Syndic battleships. Try to disrupt their attacks instead of meeting them head-on.” He was reciting advice from peacetime tactical workshops a century ago to someone who’d fought dozens of battles.

  But Cresida nodded again as if Geary had imparted some piece of hidden wisdom. “Warrior can’t maneuver well enough to dodge. She’ll have to meet the attack. I don’t know about Majestic and Orion.”

  Geary’s ship status display showed that both Majestic and Orion had regained most of their maneuvering capability, so he guessed that Cresida was actually expressing doubt about what they’d do when confronted by the mass of Syndic battleships. He wasn’t sure of that himself. “I understand. Conqueror shouldn’t give you any trouble.” Captain Casia was technically senior to Cresida, but Geary had painstakingly crafted orders which so limited Casia’s role to close defense of the auxiliaries that he shouldn’t be able to interfere with the actions of the much-more-capable Cresida.

  “I hope Conqueror manages to give the enemy some trouble,” Cresida observed.

  “Me, too. We’re going to disrupt the attack before it reaches you. Hopefully that’ll do enough damage to make the plan work.”

  Cresida smiled, startling Geary. “If it doesn’t, there’s worse fates. I’ve got someone waiting for me.”

  It took him a moment to realize that she wasn’t talking about someone waiting at home, but rather about what would happen if Furious was destroyed in the engagement. “We need you, Captain Cresida. Do your duty, but the Alliance already has too many dead heroes.”

  “Yes, it does.” Cresida nodded again.

  Geary ended the transmission and stared at his display, where the mighty Syndic pursuit force was still accelerating into its attack. He wondered how many more dead heroes the Alliance would have before this day ended.

  FOUR

  “You’re not going to change the formation?” Captain Desjani asked again.

  “No, I’m not going to change the formation!” Geary gave her an annoyed glance. How many times had she asked the question over the last hour? “We need to look like an easy, disorganized target.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, we are an easy, disorganized target in this formation.” Desjani saw Geary’s scowl deepen but kept speaking. “Our firepower is spread throughout a wide region. The Syndics will be able to overwhelm each of those subformations one after another, just like we overcame each weak Syndic formation we encountered.”

  She was stubborn, but she was smart, and under other circumstances she’d probably be right. Geary forced down his temper. “We can’t engage them as a fleet. They have too great an advantage in firepower when you take into account that they probably have much bigger stocks of missiles and grapeshot on hand than we do.”

  “If we concentrate on one part of the formation like you did last time we were in Lakota—”

  “Tanya, look.” He gestured at the display. “Last time the Syndics let themselves get suckered into spreading out to catch us, which allowed us to concentrate and punch through. The CEO in command now was smart enough to learn from that. The Syndic formation is already concentrated into a fairly tight box.”

  “Then we can maneuver around it.”

  “Not with our fuel cell reserves in the state they are and not with the auxiliaries to worry about! They’ve take
n on a lot of materials, and they’re sluggish as hell again with all of that extra mass.” Desjani glared at the display, clearly wanting to argue some more. Geary kept his voice reasonable with some effort. “The disadvantage of the Syndic formation is that it’s so deep and dense that their CEO can’t maneuver it easily. If our trap fails, we’ll have to take what advantage we can of that by hitting it again and again on the edges.”

  “It would take forever to wear down that force that way,” Desjani pointed out. “We don’t have enough fuel cells to do that, either.”

  He took a moment to reply, looking at the display again, where the Syndic pursuit force was eight light-minutes distant. It had reached point one light speed and was still coming right for them, its box formation looking like a huge brick aimed at the Alliance fleet’s bubble. Desjani was right, of course. He knew that. Sure, a head-on clash of concentrated formations would almost certainly result in the Alliance fleet being shattered against the much stronger Syndic force. But at least the end would happen quickly. What would be the purpose of drawing it out, losing ships one by one over a much longer period, with the same defeat awaiting them in the end?

  The alternative would be to run, now, as fast as the fleet could go, jump to another star system ahead of the Syndics, knowing they’d be right behind this time, the Alliance fleet unable to stop to replenish the auxiliaries again. Sooner or later he’d have to turn and fight, and probably under worse conditions than this. He’d been forced to linger here to restock his auxiliaries, but the fleet would eventually run out of fuel cells if he couldn’t replenish those stocks again, and he didn’t know how that would be possible without first engaging the Syndic pursuit force.

  “How do we want to die?” he finally whispered.

  Desjani stared at him. “We’re talking about how to win, sir.”

  “Then we fight here and try to minimize the Syndic advantages. If our plan works, our chances will get a lot better. If it doesn’t work, we have to try to make the Syndics pay as much as possible for their victory. A head-on clash will too likely destroy us before we can wear them down at all.”

  She watched him, then nodded slowly. “Hit them again and again, knowing our time is limited, holding nothing back, because there’ll be no reason to hold anything back. This will be as far as we get toward home.”

  “It might come to that, yeah.” He took a long, slow breath, grateful that he’d been able to share that thought with someone.

  Desjani flicked her eyes toward the back of the bridge for the barest moment. “Are you going to tell her?”

  Her? Rione. “She’s brave enough, but I think she’d have a little trouble understanding.”

  “I think you’re right. Captain Geary, if we don’t win, we’re going to make sure this Syndic victory is one they wish they’d never achieved because it’s going to cost them more than they ever imagined possible.”

  He felt a smile on his lips and nodded to Desjani. “Damn right we will.”

  “Estimated time to engagement range with Syndic Pursuit Flotilla one and one half hours,” the operations watch-stander announced.

  It all came down to timing again. His now-long-dead teachers, officers experienced in decades of fleet maneuvers, had drilled into Geary that the worst temptation a commander faced was to act too soon. Watching the enemy approach for hours or days, it was far too easy to jump the gun, make changes too early that should occur at the last moment before the enemy could see them and react. Make the changes too early, and the enemy would react, then you’d have to change things again, and they’d react again. He’d seen it happen in fleet exercises, as commanders drove ships and crews to exhaustion before the first shots could be exchanged.

  Simulate indecision, simulate panic, while all the time real indecision and panic lurked ready to pounce. His fleet was waiting for orders. They trusted him, even though variations on his debate with Desjani were surely happening on a lot of ships. But they’d seen him snatch victory from the jaws of defeat before this, so they waited.

  Most of them waited. Captain Casia wasn’t happy. “The Syndic attack is less than fifty minutes away from contact! Why are my ships still at point zero two light speed and accompanying these Syndic wrecks?”

  “Your ships are accompanying the Alliance auxiliaries,” Geary pointed out.

  “We are the closest to the enemy, and the nearest supporting formation is at least half an hour travel time distant! ”

  “That’s correct, Captain Casia.”

  Casia’s face reddened. “I will contact the other officers in this fleet and demand an immediate conference to decide on your competence to command. We need a fleet commander who will act, not one who lets this fleet sit idly while an overwhelming Syndic force approaches!”

  It would be much easier to lose his temper with Casia, but he couldn’t really afford to do that. Nor did he need the distraction of dealing with a call for a fleet conference right now. Fortunately, he’d learned enough about the way this fleet thought to know how to counter Casia. “Am I correct that you are declining the honor of being in the fore of the battle?” Geary asked, adding a hint of surprise to his voice.

  “De—?” Casia broke off his words and swallowed, then spoke with a little less bluster. “That’s not what’s involved.”

  “I have arranged the fleet so that your battleship division will meet the enemy first. Do you wish me to inform the fleet that you decline that role?”

  “I … my ship and my crew deserve a fighting chance!”

  “They will have it, Captain Casia. I’m sure Conqueror and her crew will acquit themselves well.”

  Unable to contradict Geary without condemning himself in the eyes of his fellow officers, Casia abruptly broke off the transmission.

  Slumping back, Geary rubbed his forehead, wishing the Syndics would hurry up and get here. He felt worn-out already, and the day had a lot left in it.

  “Ration bar?” Desjani asked, offering one.

  “Tell me it’s not a Danaka Yoruk bar.”

  “It’s not a Danaka Yoruk bar.”

  “Thanks.” Geary took the offered bar, then read the label. “It is a Danaka Yoruk bar. Why’d you tell me it wasn’t?”

  “Because you told me to tell you that,” Desjani explained, unable totally to suppress a grin. Her spirits always rose as action drew closer. “They’re all we have left. They taste the worst, so everybody ate the others first. We’ve got some Syndic ration bars from Sancere that we’re about to break out.”

  “What are those like?”

  “The chief who volunteered to taste test them informed me that they have one great virtue.” She indicated the bar Geary was holding. “They make Danaka Yoruk bars taste good by comparison.”

  “If I have to face death today, why does my possibly last meal have to be a Danaka Yoruk bar?” Geary complained. He ripped the seal, then bit off a chunk and tried to swallow without actually tasting the bar. It was only partially successful.

  The ration bar did accomplish one thing, distracting Geary from the approach of the Syndic pursuit force while he choked it down. When he focused back on the display, it showed forty minutes until the Syndics closed to engagement range. Five more minutes. Then it’s showtime. Ancestors, I need everything you can give me today. Please guide me.

  He called Captain Tyrosian, Captain Cresida, and Captain Casia in a linked transmission. “Get your last shuttles recovered now. Captain Tyrosian, break contact with the Syndic repair ships. In four minutes I’ll provide maneuvering orders for your ships. Captain Cresida, Captain Casia, follow your orders but remember that your overriding priority is to maneuver the ships under your command in order to defend the fast fleet auxiliaries to the best of your ability.”

  He watched the final two shuttles still out dodge inside their docks on Titan and Witch as the grapples and conveyors still holding all four auxiliaries to the Syndic repair ships withdrew. Geary checked the latest vector for the Syndic pursuit force and ran out the maneuverin
g solution, making a small last-moment adjustment. The last minute ticked down, and Geary contacted the auxiliaries again. “Captain Tyrosian, accelerate your ships at their maximum capability. As soon as you clear the Casualty Flotilla, come port zero three degrees, down zero one degrees. Inform the commanders of Titan, Jinn, and Goblin that they are to maneuver as necessary to ensure the vector for the fastest intercept of them by the Syndic pursuit force passes directly through the center of the Casualty Flotilla.”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Tyrosian acknowledged.

  “The success of this battle plan depends upon you and the other auxiliaries, Captain. I assure you that the rest of the fleet will be coming to assist in your defense.”

  Tyrosian managed a tense smile. “I know you have to make it a good show for the Syndics, sir. We won’t let you down.”

  Geary checked his display again. The Syndics were three light-minutes away now, the time lag between what he saw of them and what they were actually doing at that moment growing steadily shorter. Was it time to move some more of his own ships? Not yet. He had to time it right, make it look like the Alliance fleet was reacting in piecemeal, disorganized fashion while actually bringing his ships in to hit the Syndics at close to the same time.

  Titan, Witch, Goblin, and Jinn accelerated with painful slowness, their usual sluggishness now amplified by all the extra mass they’d taken on from the Syndic repair ships. He had factored that in and hoped the maneuvering systems and his own experience with the auxiliaries had been accurate enough to keep them from being overrun by the Syndic pursuit force too soon.

  Between the four auxiliaries and the Syndic pursuit force, the four battleships and Cresida’s two battle cruisers accelerated as well, maintaining their relative positions for now. Around them, the two heavy cruisers, twenty light cruisers, and destroyers also serving as escorts kept their speed down and held their position on the Alliance auxiliaries, too.

  Geary felt an odd pang of regret as he watched the Alliance ships leaving the deserted ships of the Casualty Flotilla behind, the wreck of Audacious near the center of the formation seeming to protest this latest abandonment. Don’t worry, lady. We’re not giving you back to the Syndics. They’ll discover that you’ve got one punch left in you.