commander bought us about a half hour, but I estimate another half hour is still needed, sir. Titan is lagging, though. She took a lot of damage,” Desjani added quickly.
“Yeah.” Geary checked Titan’s status. Perhaps he should order the crew to evacuate…No. Titan was an auxiliary, a mobile fleet-repair-and-rebuild ship. Essentially a small shipyard accompanying the fleet to repair damage too serious for ships to fix on their own, and to manufacture replacement items from raw materials. There’d been two Titan class ships with the fleet, Geary saw. The other had been blown to fragments during the recent battle. There were other repair-and-rebuild ships still surviving, but none of them had Titan’s range of capabilities. I need Titan if I’m going to get this fleet home. But she was slow to start with, and now she’s got battle damage to her engines slowing her more. All I can do is pray I rattled that Syndic goon enough to keep his fleet passive for another half hour.
As far as Geary could tell, the Syndic fleet hadn’t yet moved, maintaining the same position relative to the Alliance fleet. As a result of the redeployment, Geary’s own ships had shifted out of their crescent into a rough oval, which on the displays looked like a shield protecting the most heavily damaged and slowest Alliance ships that had fallen back in a hopefully inconspicuous way toward the jump point. Geary watched the symbols representing his ships crawling across space, praying for a little more time.
“We’re picking up movement by the Syndic ships. Blue shift.”
That meant the Syndics had increased their speed toward the Alliance fleet. Geary cursed under his breath and stared at the display showing the enemy forces. The Syndic fleet hadn’t changed formation at all, maintaining that wall of firepower, but as he watched, Dauntless’s long-range optical sensors tagged ship after ship with movement vectors indicating they were accelerating toward the Alliance fleet. Like every other ship commander Geary had ever known, he wished for a magic detection system that could’ve provided information at faster-than-light speed. But like communications, sensors in normal space were still limited to light-speed. Which means they started moving less than three minutes ago, so they’ve already got the jump on us. “They’re holding formation. The slowest ships are setting the pace.”
Desjani nodded, her face tense. “That must mean they don’t suspect your plan.”
My plan. Yeah. I hope it works. “How do I call the fleet?” he asked Desjani.
She tapped some buttons. “You’re on.”
Geary took a deep breath. “All ships, this is the fleet commander, Captain John Geary. Execute Overture immediately upon receipt. I say again, execute Overture immediately upon receipt.” There wasn’t time for a neatly executed maneuver, coordinated in advance so that every ship would have time to receive the signal before the fleet moved in unison. But the fleet wasn’t dispersed too widely. Every ship should receive the message within a minute and begin moving as soon as they heard the order.
On his display, ships flared with green dots as they acknowledged the order, the wave of green spreading out from Dauntless’s position on all sides as ships received the order and replied. In the same way, beginning with the ships closest to Dauntless, the Alliance fleet raggedly surged into motion toward the jump point. Dauntless’s own engines kicked in, steering the flagship toward the center of the force. Geary watched his ships accelerating, seeing some of the faster ships falling in around the slower ones to act as escorts, eyeing the Syndic advance for the first signs they’d realized what he was doing, that the Alliance fleet wasn’t simply falling back in a bid to delay an inevitable battle within this system but was planning to jump out of immediate danger.
“Titan’s still lagging.”
Geary nodded in response to Desjani’s words, feeling a tightness in his guts as he watched the big, slow ship’s movement. “I wish she could’ve gotten closer to the jump point.”
“Given the amount of damage she’s sustained, Titan got as close as she could in the time available and given the plan’s constraints.”
Geary gritted his teeth, though not in anger at Desjani. She was doing exactly what she should do-tell him the truth as she saw it. But he’d approved the plan. He’d seen Titan in it, in the short time he had to look at that plan, and hadn’t known the huge repair ship would be a concern. Hadn’t known that she’d move so slow. It wasn’t like they’d had a lot of time to move her or that they could be too obvious about it, but he’d approved the plan, they hadn’t been able to stall the Syndics long enough, and now Titan was in real trouble.
Because now he could see signs that the enemy was reacting, finally realizing that the Alliance fleet was fleeing toward the jump point. The time-late images of the wall of Syndic warships showed it stretching out of shape toward them as the faster ships began to pull away from their slower counterparts. Three minutes for them to see what we were doing, some time more for them to figure out what it meant, and then three more minutes for us to see them act on that information. They’ll be closing on us now, and the information will get more and more timely, but that’s not a good thing since it means the enemy will be getting closer to being able to engage our rearmost ships. He couldn’t call it a rear guard, because the ships farthest back were there from necessity, not design.
Geary found himself wishing for hidden squadrons of ships, waiting to leap out from some impossible concealment to lop the head off of the Syndic formation. But he had no such squadrons, no such means of hiding them, and any ship he sent to hit those exposed ships at the head of the Syndic advance would be unable to retreat to safety before the Syndic main body closed in.
Geary kept watching the ships and their movement vectors slide across the display and didn’t need to calculate the result. His own experience with understanding relative motion provided the answer as the minutes crawled by. “The Syndic interceptors are coming on too fast. Titan won’t make the jump point before some of them get within engagement range of her.”
Desjani nodded. “Concur.”
“Can Titan’s escorts stop them?”
She pondered the question for a moment, then shook her head. “Not just with their stern weaponry. They’d have to turn.”
“And then they’d be doomed.” I might have to do that. Might have to order that. I don’t want to lose those ships, those crews, but if it’s them or Titan, and Titan’s necessary for everyone else to get home…
Another nod from Captain Desjani. “We can abandon Titan. Try to pick up some of her crew.”
“We need that ship.”
Desjani hesitated, then she nodded a third time. “Yes.”
“Then we can’t abandon her.” Desjani gave him a worried look. Trying to figure out how the legendary Black Jack Geary can get out of this mess? If you do figure out how, let me know. How to buy time for Titan? Geary scowled at the displays, trying to find some way to change the physics and coming up with only one answer no matter how he tried.
Trade at least a ship for a ship. Either a squadron of lighter ships, or some ship powerful enough to single-handedly stave off the onrushing Syndic lead elements but less “important” than Titan. I can’t use Dauntless. Wouldn’t it be a relief if I did? Another last stand, and this time end it all for sure. No more burden of command, no more legions of desperate people looking to me as their only hope. No more fate of the Alliance, perhaps, hanging on my head, and no more hearing about Black Jack Geary, the Hero of the Alliance. But I can’t. The key’s onboard. I made a promise. Even if I hadn’t, I can’t abandon my duty to all of these people. But then which ship do I choose instead? Who do I send to their deaths? His eyes searched among the ships, trying to make a choice he hated.
And then he saw something else. “What’s Repulse doing? She’s falling back.”
Desjani gestured to her crew, then waited for a reply. “I’m informed Repulse has notified the fleet that she’ll be maneuvering independently.”
“What? Get me their commanding officer.” Repulse was still only thirty light- seconds away, so it took only a minute for Dauntless to send its request and Repulse to reply. The newly familiar face of Repulse’s commanding officer appeared before Geary. “What are you doing?” Geary demanded without preamble. “You’re going to be overtaken by Syndic ships soon unless you get your speed back up. Return to your
