the jump points.
Geary had kept his eye on both the Syndics and his own Formation Echo Five Five. But since arriving in the formation, Captain Midea and Paladin had behaved themselves, holding station near Orion and Majestic.
The only excitement that had happened was watching the kinetic barrage launched by the Alliance battleships slowly spread out across the vast distances of the Lakota Star System, scores of tracks headed on intercepts with the orbits of certain moons and planets and installations. As the barrage reached each objective, the sensors on Dauntless provided sharp, clear pictures of the impacts, Syndic defense installations and fixed weaponry vanishing in fountaining bursts of plasma and debris.
“At least we’ve done something in this system,” Desjani grumbled after they’d watched one more Syndic facility turned into craters rimmed with broken junk. Then she gave Geary an embarrassed look. “I didn’t mean-”
“I understand. I’m frustrated, too.”
Off to one side, the captured Syndic ore carriers were slowly converging on the Alliance formation, the two squadrons of Alliance destroyers escorting them like vigilant sheepdogs. In order to make the intercept, the lumbering Syndic merchant ships were burning almost all of their fuel cells in sustained acceleration, but since they wouldn’t be going anywhere once the Alliance was done with them, that scarcely mattered.
“Seven hours until Echo Five Five meets up with those ore carriers,” Desjani observed.
“Yeah. Why aren’t the Syndics doing anything? They’ve never been this passive when we entered one of their systems.”
Unfortunately, intelligence couldn’t provide any answers, either, though Lieutenant Iger suggested that if Geary swung close by the habitable world, it might provoke more Syndic message traffic that could be exploited. Not wanting to burn more fuel cells by diverting the fleet from its path to go closer to that world, and not wanting to put any ships in danger from Syndic defenses mounted on the planet, Geary declined to implement the suggestion.
The Alliance fleet was almost an hour past its closest approach to the hypernet gate, with Geary seriously considering additional steps to make his auxiliaries more attractive targets for the Syndic flotilla still guarding the hypernet gate, when something finally happened. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good thing.
“Captain Geary, there’s a Syndic flotilla exiting the jump point from T’negu.”
By the time Geary reached the bridge of Dauntless, the fleet’s sensors had finished analyzing the size of the new force. Captain Desjani pointed to the display. “We ran the numbers, and it looks like this was the blocking force at T’negu, where they expected us to go. One of the HuKs watching us at Ixion surely jumped for T’negu as soon as they saw we’d jumped for Lakota. If our information on jump transit times from Ixion to T’negu, and then T’negu to here, are right, there would have been just enough time for that HuK to reach T’negu, inform the Syndics there of where we were actually going, and for them to jump here.”
“We should have expected that,” Geary noted, angry with himself. During its retreat so far through Syndic space, the Alliance fleet hadn’t encountered many situations where that sort of space geometry applied, but that was no excuse for missing it here.
“Syndics don’t usually react that quickly,” Desjani pointed out. “It should have taken them a while longer to get approval to leave T’negu and come here.”
Geary didn’t debate the point, gazing glumly at the size of the new Syndic flotilla. “Eighteen battleships, fourteen battle cruisers, twenty-three heavy cruisers.” Plus plenty of light cruisers and HuKs. The Syndic forces at the hypernet gate and this new flotilla combined now roughly equaled the size of the Alliance fleet. “The odds in this star system just evened up.”
“We still have an advantage over each of those forces individually,” Desjani argued.
“Yeah, if we can bring one of them to action without the other. But that new force is heavy enough to be a big problem.” He thought about what would have happened if the Alliance fleet had arrived at T’negu and run into a maze of minefields plus that big Syndic flotilla. Things could definitely be worse. He took another look at the display. “They must have seen us the instant they entered the system. Why aren’t they headed to intercept us?”
Desjani shook her head. “I don’t know, sir. Smaller Syndic forces have been more aggressive than that when we’ve met them.” She turned to look at him. “Maybe they’re frightened of you.”
He almost laughed, but Desjani appeared absolutely serious. “That’d be nice if true,” he finally noted. “But-”
“They’re turning!” a watch-stander called out. “Syndic Flotilla Bravo is adjusting course and speed.”
Geary’s eyes went back to the display. The Syndic force was a good three light-hours away. They’d seen the Alliance force over three hours before the Alliance fleet had even been aware that the Syndics had arrived. Plenty of time to plan something or to send or receive orders from the Syndic authorities in this system. Yet only now was the new flotilla apparently reacting to the presence of the Alliance fleet.
“They’ve turned past an intercept course,” Desjani noted, surprised. “Where are they going?” Unfortunately, the answer to that became apparent all too soon. “They’re heading for the jump point for Branwyn,” Desjani noted sourly.
“Obviously not to jump that way,” Geary added. The Syndic forces he’d encountered before this had tended to be aggressive, even when that didn’t make much sense. This flotilla wasn’t acting like that. “Are they just going to sit at that jump point like the other flotilla is sitting at the hypernet gate? Is this the new Syndic tactic, to wait us out until we do something dumb?”
Desjani frowned. “They were laying mines at T’negu, we think.”
“Yeah.” The meaning of that got through to him. “They’re going to mine the jump point to Branwyn, aren’t they?”
“I think so, sir. With us trying to leave this star system, they can completely block the jump point so that we can’t reach it without going through part of the minefield.”
“Which we’d have to slow down to do to keep from losing too many ships, thus making us vulnerable to high- speed attacks from that flotilla.” The number of good options was shrinking rapidly now. “Do you think we can lure them away from the jump point for Branwyn by pointing this fleet at the hypernet gate?”
Desjani thought, biting her lower lip, then nodded. “They can’t afford to let us reach that gate with superior numbers, and the commander of that new flotilla will catch hell if he or she forces the first flotilla to destroy the gate by not coming after us. But the gate flotilla can destroy it on their own if need be, and threatening the gate now would mean turning our heels to the new Syndic force. It won’t look right.”
“I want to get this new Syndic flotilla out of position so we can attack it,” Geary pointed out.
“That’s true,” Desjani noted doubtfully.
“They won’t attack rashly,” Rione observed.
Geary turned to look, not having realized that Rione had joined them. “Why not?”
“Because even Syndics learn eventually if hit hard enough.” Rione looked at Geary. “How many Syndic warships has this fleet destroyed under your command? How many battles have you won? Not only won but done so in a one-sided manner not normally seen. You’ve done this again and again.” She waved toward the depiction of newly designated Syndic Flotilla Bravo on the display. “The Syndics have learned. They doubtless have orders to engage you only under favorable circumstances, to force you into a bad position. They can wait us out, but we don’t have the luxury of trying to wait them out.”
“They’re frightened of Captain Geary,” Desjani repeated triumphantly. “But the only way they can stop this fleet from using the jump point for Branwyn is by fullscale battle.”
Geary studied the situation. Everything important was pretty much in the plane of the star system right now, neither significantly up nor down relative to each other. The Alliance fleet, taking an arcing path through space, had traveled more than halfway to the new jump point and was now heading outward through Lakota Star System, its ships’ bows pointing toward deep space. The Syndic hypernet gate and the enemy flotilla standing sentry near it were just over three light-hours away in a direction just aft of the port beams of the Alliance ships. The inhabited world orbited partway on the other side of the star Lakota, nearly a light-hour distant and totally irrelevant in terms of threats to the Alliance ships right now. The new Syndic flotilla had entered through the jump exit from T’negu about three light-hours off the starboard bows of the Alliance fleet and had turned onto a course that would take it slowly across those bows. If neither fleet changed course or velocity again, the new Syndic flotilla would cross the bows of the Alliance warship at a distance of about half a light-hour, continuing on toward
