Jack Campbell: Relentless

Merlon ’s destruction. His eyes went to the star display floating over the table in his stateroom. He’d left it active when he went to sleep, centered on the star Dilawa. Still inside Syndic space, but only three more jumps away from reaching safety in Alliance space. He was so close to saving those who had believed he could save them. But the fleet was still inside enemy territory, still had to fight its way past the Syndic flotilla that would surely be waiting at the end of one of those jumps, and the loss of the Merlon had come back to haunt him.

Geary exhaled wearily, then dug in a drawer for a ration bar. He eyed the bar dubiously. Like most of the food left in the fleet, the bar had come from Syndic stockpiles abandoned in place when marginal star systems had been deserted after the introduction of the hypernet. It was food even the Syndics didn’t think worth hauling away. While no doubt long past its expiration date, the bar and the other food they’d picked up had been frozen in airless vacuum since abandonment and technically remained edible. The bar had a propaganda wrapper featuring impossibly heroic-looking Syndic ground troops marching from left to right. He tore the wrapper open, trying to avoid reading the ingredients, then started biting off and swallowing chunks of it. Despite his best efforts to avoid tasting the thing, he still ended up wincing at the flavor. Sailors in the Alliance fleet often complained about the food they got, but one of the few virtues of these Syndic supplies was that (aside from keeping you alive) they also made the Alliance rations taste wonderful by comparison.

And, as the ancient joke went, not only was the food terrible but there wasn’t enough of it. The bar sat like a lead ball in Geary’s stomach, but that wasn’t why he didn’t get another. A fleet cut off from resupply and trapped in enemy territory had to get by on short rations. He wouldn’t eat better than his sailors. Though considering the quality of the Syndic food, “better” probably wasn’t the right term. His comm panel buzzed urgently, and Geary hit the acknowledge button.

“Captain Geary, enemy ships have arrived at the jump point from Cavalos.”

He slapped another control, and the star display winked out, to be replaced with a display showing just the Dilawa Star System and the ships within it. There hadn’t been much in the way of Syndicate Worlds’ warships left in the Cavalos Star System when the Alliance fleet departed, unless you counted the wreckage of the Syndic warships that orbited Cavalos in slowly spreading clouds of debris. But there were plenty more Syndic warships hunting Geary’s fleet, and the Alliance fleet was increasingly feeling the strain of the long retreat through Syndic space. Not all of the wreckage left at Cavalos had belonged to Syndic warships. The Alliance battle cruiser Opportune , the scout battleship Braveheart , and nine Alliance cruisers and destroyers had also been lost in the battle there, some torn apart in the battle and some blown to pieces on Geary’s orders because they had been too badly damaged to keep up with the retreating fleet.

The pressure was wearing on him as well. His mind kept dwelling on the losses suffered thus far by the Alliance fleet, which was probably why he was getting post-traumatic-stress flashbacks again. With an effort, he focused on what was happening now. “Only one HuK and two nickel corvettes,”

Geary commented.

“That’s right,” Captain Desjani replied, her image popping up next to the display. She was on the bridge, of course, watching over her ship. “Too bad they’re almost three light-hours away. Dauntless ’s hell-lance crews would enjoy the target practice.”

“Not that your hell-lance crews need target practice, Tanya,” Geary agreed, his remark earning him a proud grin from Desjani. As she’d noted, the jump point was three light-hours distant from where the Alliance fleet was located deeper inside the star system, which meant the images he was seeing of the Syndic warships were three hours old. “No one’s following them in. They must be scouts.”

“Agreed. We expect to see one of the nickels brake to stay near the jump point. The other nickel and the Hunter-Killer should accelerate toward the jump points for Kalixa and Heradao.” She paused. “This is the first time I’ve seen a nickel corvette outside a Syndic-occupied star system. Those things are so obsolete I’m surprised they risk them in jump space.”

So obsolete, in fact, that nickel corvettes had been operating a hundred years ago, back when they’d been given that nickname by the Alliance because they were seen as cheap and easily expended in battle. Back when the war began. Images from his flashback returned, of nickel corvettes making firing runs on Merlon .

“Sir?” Desjani asked.

Geary shook his head, startled to realize he’d let his mind drift like that. “Sorry.”

Only Geary might have been able to see the concern in the look Desjani gave him, but she went on speaking as if everything was routine. “The first nickel corvette may jump back for Cavalos in a little while to let them know we’re still here.” Her expression shifted, now professionally unrevealing. “Since we are still here.”

“We need everything we can salvage from the materiel the Syndics left behind when they pulled the last people out of this star system decades ago,” Geary replied, trying not to speak angrily in response to Desjani’s prodding.

“We’ve lifted all of the abandoned food already.” Desjani made a face. “If I can use the term ‘food’ loosely. The fleet is still going to have to reduce rations again to stretch out what food we’ve got left.”

She shrugged. “That’s one good thing about the slop we’re getting from the cast-off Syndic stockpiles. No one really wants to eat a lot of it, so shortening the rations doesn’t bother the crews as much as it would if the food were edible.”

“I guess there’s a bright side to everything.” Geary smiled briefly as he rechecked the information on the raw minerals being loaded into the bunkers on the fleet’s auxiliaries, then realized that Desjani had first made her point about the need for the fleet to move and then deliberately changed the subject to defuse his resentment.

I shouldn’t be angry. It’s a legitimate concern for every commanding officer in this fleet. When are we leaving Dilawa, and where are we going? We’ve been here for almost a day and a half, and that’s probably at least one day too long.

There weren’t any good reasons for staying at Dilawa. A star without any habitable worlds orbiting it, Dilawa had once boasted only a small human presence, perhaps several thousand judging from the facilities the Syndics had left behind. Those humans had been here because the old faster-than-light system jump drives could only take ships from star to nearby star, requiring ships to pass through every star system on the way to their objectives. The hypernet had changed that, allowing ships to go from any gate in the net directly to any other gate, leaving the human presence in many unexceptional star systems to dwindle gradually as the interstellar traffic bypassed them.

But those old jump drives were getting his fleet home, one star system at a time, and the hypernet had proved to be a threat to the very existence of humanity. Dauntless was also carrying a Syndic hypernet key, which could provide a decisive advantage to the Alliance if it could be safely delivered into Alliance space. If he didn’t get the fleet home, that key and the knowledge of the threat posed by the hypernet would be lost along with the warships and their crews. The costs of failure seemed higher every time he thought about them. “Let me know if anything changes,” he asked Desjani.

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