Jack Campbell - The Lost Fleet - Courageous

“What’s the matter, sir?” Desjani asked, instantly alert as her own eyes scanned her display. “Oh. Damn.”

“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.