And they trusted him. They trusted him when he said that. They trusted him with their lives. In a very real way, they trusted him to save the Alliance, though saving the Alliance didn’t always mean the same thing, depending on who they were.
He paid a little more attention to how the crew members of Dauntless talked about home, about the Alliance, trying to see if they expressed the same frustrations with politicians, the same feelings that the blame for the state of the war rested there. Perhaps he was hypersensitive to the issue now, but Geary thought he heard more of that sort of thing than he’d ever realized was being said. Like Rione told me that time, it doesn’t matter what you say as much as what people think they hear. I haven’t been hearing this stuff.
No wonder they welcomed the “miraculous” return of Black Jack Geary so much. They weren’t looking for just a military leader but for someone to lead the Alliance itself. Ancestors, help me.
He returned to the bridge with about an hour to go, finding that Rione was now there in the observer’s seat, she and Desjani being outwardly polite when dealing with each other.
The only option left for killing time was calling up the local star systems display and trying to figure out where to go if the fleet couldn’t employ the Syndic hypernet gate at Lakota, which was the most likely outcome. As usual, the lack of current intelligence on surrounding star systems ranged from being annoying to infuriating. Branwyn seemed relatively safe as stars went, but had its small human presence and associated mining facilities been abandoned in the decades since the latest reports available to Geary, or were the Syndics still there to complicate any attempt to get more materials for the auxiliaries? Going to Branwyn would also continue toward Alliance space. Had its jump points already been mined? Were Syndic blocking forces already moving into position?
Of the other options, T’negu was actually reachable from Lakota just as it had been from Ixion. Would the jump exit from Lakota be mined or left unobstructed, since the Alliance fleet wasn’t supposed to enter T’negu from that direction? Seruta seemed average, bypassed by the hypernet system, with a single harsh but habitable world holding a population measured in tens of millions and a scattering of off-planet facilities. No special threat there, but going to Seruta angled away from Alliance space again. And of course Ixion, the place they’d left.
He didn’t like the options, but they were better than in any other place he could have taken the fleet.
“Five minutes to jump exit,” a watch-stander called, startling Geary out of his thoughts.
Captain Desjani tapped an intercom control. “All hands prepare for battle upon exit. Remember that the eyes of Captain Geary are upon us.”
He tried not to flinch, but something made Geary look back to see Rione’s reaction. She gazed back at him with an unreadable expression, but her eyes betrayed nervousness.
“One minute to jump exit.”
Geary tried to calm his breathing, focusing on the display where a portrayal of Lakota Star System now hung before him, showing what the old records knew of that star and the Syndic presence there. In moments that display would begin frantically updating as the fleet entered normal space again and the fleet’s sensors began spotting everything that wasn’t in those old records.
“Stand by. Exit.”
Grayness turned to blackness, then Geary felt himself being pushed to one side as Dauntless swung through the tight turn preprogrammed into the maneuvering systems. All around Dauntless, the rest of the ships of the main body swung together in the same turn. Up ahead, the vanguard was already well into the turn, and to either side the flanking formations were turning along with the main body. Moments later, the trailing formation flashed into existence, then began the same swing to port.
“Where are the mines?” Desjani demanded, then smiled grimly as warning markers sprang to life on the displays. Sure enough, a dense minefield floated along the straight path out of the jump point. The Alliance fleet had now turned so that the coin-shaped formations were moving in the directions of one of the thin sides, as if five coins were standing and sliding across a smooth surface edge first. Off to the starboard of the Alliance formations, the minefield drifted past impotently.
His gaze swinging away from the most immediate threat, Geary searched for enemy warships. None just outside the jump exit. None nearby. His eyes went farther and farther across the display, scarcely able to believe the lack of enemy warships, until they reached the hypernet gate.
The expected Syndic flotilla waited there, cruising slowly past the hypernet gate on what must be a fixed patrol path. “Syndic Flotilla Alpha consists of six battleships, four battle cruisers, nine heavy cruisers, thirteen light cruisers, and twenty HuKs,” the combat systems watch reported at the same time as the displays portrayed the identical information.
“We’ve got them,” Desjani exulted. “We can take that force easily.” She turned a fierce grin on Geary, the smile of a fellow teammate when the other side has made a fatal error and victory seems assured.
Geary tried to relax himself, scanning the displays for any more Syndic warships in Lakota. But except for a couple of HuKs moving down near the inhabited world five light-hours from the Alliance fleet’s current position, everything seemed to be in the flotilla moving past the looming presence of the hypernet gate.
“That would be more than enough Syndic firepower to destroy that gate before we reach it,” Rione noted flatly.
“Yeah.” Geary nodded. But such a possible opportunity shouldn’t be thrown away. Couldn’t be thrown away. Desjani wouldn’t be the only officer in the fleet convinced that the Syndics were easy prey. “A straight charge at the gate would cause the Syndics to stay there and destroy it. We need to try to lure them out of position, then get to the gate before they can return.”
“If we destroy them-” Desjani began.
“I know. But our overriding priority is getting to that gate while it’s intact.”
Desjani nodded reluctantly.
“How will you lure them?” Rione asked.
“What would you suggest?” Geary replied.
Rione spent a moment thinking. “Offer them something? An irresistible target?”
“Yes,” Desjani agreed. “Make them think we’re not interested in the gate and present a target they’ll have to go after.”
Unfortunately, there was only one Alliance target that satisfied that need. “Formation Echo Five Five. The auxiliaries and the badly damaged warships.” Like sick animals at the rear of the herd. But he didn’t want to lose any of those ships. The auxiliaries remained crucial to the fleet’s continued survival, and the damaged warships with them were not only important for the combat capability they retained but for what their presence told the fleet: that Geary wouldn’t abandon ships or crews. Using them as bait didn’t exactly keep faith with that concept.
He took a long look at the entire situation again. Lakota Star System seemed wealthy after the sparsely populated stars the Alliance fleet had visited lately. The primary inhabited planet, nine light-hours distant on the other side of the star Lakota right now, showed every sign of being a growing and dynamic world. Substantial colonies existed on a couple of other planets, and facilities of various kinds dotted the system on stars, moons, and in fixed orbits. Between all of that a fair amount of civilian traffic moved, merchant ships plying within the system and heading outward from within it or inbound after arriving from other stars, and big ore carriers hauling resources from the mines on rich but uninhabitable outer worlds and asteroids. Fixed antiorbital defenses surrounded a few off-planet locations, but Geary paid them little attention. Those, and the military stations orbiting the inhabited world, were sitting ducks for long-range bombardment by his fleet.
If only they could linger here to haul some of the cargo from those ore carriers onto the Alliance auxiliaries.
The maneuvering systems had no trouble running the actions that Geary wanted. “Second and Seventh Destroyer Squadrons, you are to detach from the formation and intercept the Syndic ore carriers located near the gas giant one point two light-hours to starboard of the fleet. Take possession of the ore carriers and escort them to join the fleet so we can transfer their cargoes to our auxiliaries.”
He paused to decide if that was all he needed to order now, then decided to simplify his problems in this system. Geary told Dauntless’s combat systems what he wanted destroyed by highlighting targets and how to achieve it by choosing a weapon, and the combat systems presented a reply after thinking about it for a tiny fraction of a second. Geary studied the plan for a few moments himself, then forwarded it to Reprisal. “Eighth Battleship Squadron, conduct kinetic bombardment of Syndic military installations as laid out in attached plan of action.”
