“It’ll make them easier targets, anyway.”
Another hour had almost gone by when the Syndic commander’s response was received. “I am in receipt of your last communication,” the executive in the worn uniform stated precisely. “Standing Syndicate Fleet Fighting Instructions, Article Seven prohibits surrender. Article Nine requires all military installations to be defended in the most vigorous possible manner. Article Twelve states there are no situational exceptions to Articles Seven and Nine. Therefore I must again deny your request.”
Geary stared at the image for a long moment. “How can he be that stupid?”
Co-President Rione answered. “He’s a bureaucrat, Captain Geary. Look at him. Listen to him. He lives to enforce rules regardless of whether or not those rules make sense.” From her tone, Rione had met more than her share of such people already.
Geary almost laughed at the absurdity of it. A bureaucrat. Some guy who’s probably spent his entire career making sure every letter of instruction laid down decades ago and light-years away are followed down to the last subclause. The sort who thinks following every petty rule matters more than anything else. Who else would end up in command of a system where the war was never supposed to come? Who else would want to hold that command for year after empty year?
Then the reality of what the bureaucrat’s petrified insistence on following Syndic Fleet Fighting Instructions, Articles Seven, Nine, and Twelve would cause came back to Geary. He’d have to kill enough of the people serving under this bean counter to force a surrender. Damn him.
Geary punched his communication controls viciously. “To the Syndicate Commander in Corvus System. Surrender is your only option. If you force us to destroy your defenses, I assure you that I will make every effort to ensure that you personally share the fate of your front-line personnel.” He broke the connection, then turned to Captain Desjani. “Have your communications people try to ram some messages directly through to the corvettes and the cruiser telling them we’ll accept their surrender.” Desjani let disapproval show for a moment, but she nodded and gave the orders. Give it a rest, Tanya Desjani. There’s no glory in smashing people facing impossible odds.
Still three hours until the fleet got close enough to the base to engage its defenses. Desjani’s eyes strayed to the section of the display showing the battle cruisers gathered around the jump point, and it wasn’t hard for Geary to read her thoughts. Duellos’s and Tulev’s ships would get to draw blood, but Dauntless would apparently have to be content with accepting the surrender of a few outdated ships. Desjani wasn’t happy about that.
The ships of the Alliance fleet fell deeper into the Corvus System, while the individual ships crawled with widely varying speed and precision to the positions they were supposed to occupy relative to the flagship, the time-late images of the Syndic corvettes dithered around near their base, the Syndic light cruiser apparently continued to orbit the fourth world, and Geary watched it all with growing irritation. He started out trying to note every Alliance ship that was laggard about moving into the new formation, but it wasn’t too long before he’d had to switch to spotting those ships that were assuming their positions with relative speed. There were simply too many laggards to keep individual track of, and distressingly few good performers.
The leading units of the Alliance fleet were supposed to be assuming a formation resembling a huge rectangle, with the flat face toward the enemy. The main body was supposed to be in another even-larger rectangle behind that, then the support ships and their escorts were supposed to be arrayed in a cube farther back yet. Two smaller cubes off to either side were to hold screening forces ready to screen against actions by enemy forces in those areas.
Instead, the intertangled swarm of Alliance ships looked to Geary for all the world like a single distorted wedge, with the fat end toward the enemy.
An alert pulsed, and symbols sprang to life on the display. Geary held his breath as Dauntless picked up Syndic ships exiting the jump point. Modern ones, moving fast. Geary felt adrenaline surge even though he knew he was watching events that had taken place ten minutes ago. And whatever defense his battle cruisers had carried out had also played out ten minutes ago.
Geary barely had time to register the presence of a squadron of Syndic Hunter- Killers formed up around a single heavy cruiser before he watched short-range concentrated fire from Duellos’ and Tulev’s battle cruisers ripping the HuKs to shreds. Moments later, the Alliance attacks swamped the cruiser’s defenses and riddled it before it could get off more than a few shots that were absorbed harmlessly by the battle cruisers’ screens. On the heels of the visual sighting of the battle, reports from the battle cruisers began arriving, confirming what Geary had already seen.
Geary waited, but nothing else came through after the reports of the first ships. They’d been an expendable force, sent through on the off-chance that the Alliance fleet had continued fleeing in panic and hadn’t tried to defend the jump exit.
Expendable. Geary had always thought that was an ugly word and an uglier concept. Apparently, the Syndics didn’t share that feeling.
Around him, cheers had erupted on the bridge of the Dauntless as they watched the small Syndic force get slaughtered. The sound wore at Geary’s nerves, leaving him looking for something to vent his anger on. He tapped the fleet communications circuit again. “All units not yet in standard attack formation Alpha Six are to expedite their movement.”
Desjani gave Geary a surprised glance, but quickly hid her reaction. Not that the Dauntless’s captain had to worry. As flagship, the unit every other ship had to take position relative to, the Dauntless was defined as being in position the moment the order was issued. “Do you think that’s their entire fast-pursuit force?” she asked so quickly that Geary suspected she was just trying to change the subject.
How the hell would I know? Geary wanted to snap back. Instead, he thought about the question for a moment. “I think so. If they were sending through more, why leave an appreciable gap between their arrival times?” He paused. “That wasn’t a big force, though. They should’ve been able to get it through the jump point right on our heels.”
“They were just over an hour behind us.” Desjani appeared to be thinking, then nodded. “They hesitated, then sent through a small force just in case it might find us unprepared.”
Hesitated. Yes. Geary nodded back. “They sent something so they could tell their superiors they’d maintained a hot pursuit. Enough to make it look serious, but nothing big enough that they’d mind losing it.” And too bad for the sailors on the ships their bosses didn’t mind losing.
“Yes. Human life means nothing to them.” Captain Desjani looked straight into Geary’s eyes, her voice flat.
“Point taken.” I’ll have to remember not to misjudge Captain Desjani. She has what she believes are good reasons for everything she does. Geary bit his lip as he studied his display. If that was the entire Syndic fast-pursuit force, he could order the battle cruisers to rejoin the rest of the fleet. But the Syndics could’ve deliberately paused between waves to mislead defenders into thinking they wouldn’t be sending in anything else for a while. But those battle cruisers were already ten light-minutes away from the rest of the fleet. Ten minutes away for receiving messages. Ten minutes away from Geary even knowing if those ships were in trouble. At least an hour away from being able to help them. And they were getting farther away every moment. “Captain Duellos, Captain Tulev, this is Captain Geary. Well done. Please rejoin the fleet as expeditiously as possible. Have your ships assume assigned positions within standard fleet attack formation Alpha Six.”
Ten minutes for Duellos and Tulev to get the message. Then they’d have to get their ships up to speed and start a long stern chase to catch up with the fleet. It’d be quite a few hours before they were in formation.
But at that, it seemed those battle cruisers would be in formation before anyone else achieved that goal. Instead of resolving into the ordered rectangles, the Alliance fleet seemed to be rushing to further fatten the end of the rough wedge facing the Syndic base.
What the hell is going on? Geary pulled back the display, trying to see if he was missing some large picture inside the more detailed view. No. It still didn’t make sense. Only the slower units like Titan seemed to be in their assigned positions. And crippled Titan didn’t have any choice in the matter, slowly crawling across the system in the wake of the faster warships
It only gradually dawned on him that Titan was distressingly unaccompanied. “Where’re the ships that are supposed to be acting as close escort on Titan?” He expanded his look at the situation
