save her, and we’d definitely end up losing a lot more ships than Renown.”
“Renown reports she has ordered all nonessential personnel to escape pods,” Dauntless’s combat watch reported.
Geary nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He’d given the same order, a hundred years ago, a few months ago to him, at Grendel.
Desjani gave him an anguished look but said nothing.
Paladin kept coming around in a turn clearly aimed now at Renown as the rest of the Alliance fleet bent into its own down and over maneuver, turning as one to reverse the course of all of its ships except Renown and Paladin.
“Paladin!” Geary yelled, not caring if he sounded unprofessionally angry during the battle. “Return to the formation immediately! Captain Midea is relieved of command. Executive officer, assume command and return Paladin to formation!”
It was probably too late. It was certainly too late. At the velocities the ships were traveling, Paladin had already veered too far from the rest of the Alliance fleet, and the Syndics were coming around to cross under the main body of the Alliance fleet but directly at Renown and Paladin.
Renown volleyed out waves of escape pods and all of her remaining specters as the leading edge of the Syndic formation approached. Her last grapeshot followed, sparkling as it hit the shields of Syndic ships and vaporized. One, then two, Syndic HuKs fell silent as Renown’s weapons ripped into them. A light cruiser reeled away. The shields on a battle cruiser flared and failed in spots, letting some of Renown’s hell lances score hits on the enemy warship.
But an avalanche of fire was falling upon Renown. Her shields failed, her weak armor was penetrated in a hundred places, her hell-lance batteries fell silent as the stricken battle cruiser jerked and tumbled helplessly from the impacts of Syndic fire.
“No systems detected still active on Renown,” a watch-stander reported in a calm but trembling voice. “Renown’s emergency beacon has lit off. Her surviving crew is abandoning ship.”
Geary had been there, too. Hoping a functioning escape pod still existed, racing through once-familiar passageways of his ship grown foreign from massive damage, the enemy weapons still tearing into his mortally wounded ship.
“Core overload set on Renown. Contact lost with Renown.”
On the display, the battered hulk, which minutes before had been an Alliance battle cruiser, rolled silently away, her power core set to explode to deny her carcass to the enemy, the escape pods holding her crew mingling with those from the already destroyed Syndic warships.
Too late to save Renown, Paladin came tearing past and above the shattered battle cruiser. Hell lances tore out from the battleship in volleys that ripped into Syndic HuKs scrambling to escape. Two HuKs exploded under the impacts, and one more disintegrated under the blows of Paladin’s hell lances. Then the lone Alliance battleship was in among the Syndic light cruisers, its powerful hell-lance batteries shattering the shields on two of the light cruisers, destroying one and crippling the other.
A second later Paladin, her shields glowing now under an almost constant barrage of enemy fire, encountered Syndic heavy cruisers. Paladin’s own weapons tore open a single Syndic heavy cruiser as the battleship staggered onward directly toward a division of Syndic battleships.
“Captain Midea is crazy, but she’s dying well,” Desjani remarked somberly.
“Did she have to take her ship and crew with her?” Geary whispered in reply. Too late. Too late to relieve Midea. Too late to figure out how to control a reckless officer with a ship’s fate in her hands.
“Paladin’s losing shields,” the watch reported.
Geary could see that on his own display. Paladin’s lonely battle was far enough from the rest of the fleet by now that it took a few seconds for light from the fight to reach Dauntless. A lot could happen in a few seconds.
It took less time than that for Paladin to charge straight into the Syndic battleship division she’d been aiming for, shuddering as enemy weapons ripped into her from all sides. But Paladin concentrated her own fire on a single battleship even as her hell-lance batteries started falling silent under the Syndic barrage. As Paladin and that Syndic battleship flashed past each other, Paladin fired her null field at the weakened bow shields of the enemy ship. Its already-stressed shields failed, and the null field penetrated into the Syndic battleship’s bow, digging a massive crater there.
As the Syndic battleship reeled out of formation, crippled, Paladin shot through the rest of the Syndic formation, taking hit after hit, systems falling dead and pieces of armor and hull being blown off under the impact of Syndic hell lances, grapeshot, and missile fire.
As Geary’s fleet came over the top of its turn and steadied on course for another pass at the Syndic flotilla, Paladin’s remains tumbled onward past the Syndics, the only sign of life on the wreck a few escape pods popping free.
“We’ll avenge them,” Geary stated as the Alliance fleet steadied out to cross over the top of the Syndic formation again. But he’d misjudged slightly this time, maybe rattled by what was happening to Renown and Paladin, and the two groups of warships tore past each other at extreme hell-lance range, neither the Alliance nor the Syndics scoring any significant damage on the other.
“We’ll get the Syndics on the next pass,” Desjani predicted, her face grim.
“Yeah.” Geary took a deep breath, then transmitted his next orders. “All formations, turn up one one zero degrees, port zero one degrees at time five seven.” As the fleet came back around, it would invert again as the two formations wove back and forth toward each other in interlinked S curves. The Syndic commander should recognize that he couldn’t achieve a good firing pass unless he broke the pattern, but the Syndics wouldn’t break contact while they thought they had a chance to inflict damage back on the Alliance. They never had, stubbornly sticking to fights in misplaced displays of bravery and determination. In this fight, the Syndics had already been hurt a lot more than the Alliance, even after counting Renown and Paladin. By the time the Syndics decided to flee, they’d be too badly hurt for any major warship to get away.
“Sir, activity at the hypernet gate!”
Alerts pulsed on Geary’s display. His eyes went to the area of the Syndic hypernet gate even as a watch- stander began calling out the information in a breathless voice. “Syndic forces have been spotted emerging from the hypernet gate. Twenty Hunter-Killers. Update, twenty-eight Hunter-Killers. Twelve light cruisers. Update, forty- two Hunter-Killers, twenty-six light cruisers, eight heavy cruisers. Update, sixty-nine Hunter-Killers, thirty-one light cruisers, nineteen heavy cruisers.”
Geary watched the enemy symbols multiplying madly at the hypernet gate, trying not to let his dismay show.
“They’ve got a substantial number of escorts,” Desjani remarked with what Geary thought was remarkable calmness.
Which implied a lot of capital ships.
The display and the watch-stander confirmed that moments later. “Sixteen battle cruisers. Update, twenty battle cruisers. Twelve battleships. Update, twenty-three battleships.”
Geary realized he hadn’t been breathing and inhaled. At least the threat symbols had stopped growing in number. He took a long moment to read the final assessment of the new Syndic force. Twenty-three battleships, twenty battle cruisers, nineteen heavy cruisers, thirty-one light cruisers, one hundred twelve Hunter-Killers.
The odds in this star system had just gone from roughly even to very bad. In capital ships alone the Alliance fleet now had only twenty-five surviving battleships and seventeen surviving battle cruisers. The battle so far had taken out three Syndic battleships and four battle cruisers, but even after those losses, total Syndic capital ships at Lakota now added up to forty-four battleships and thirty-four battle cruisers, most of those fresh and presumably with full load-outs of expendable munitions, whereas the Alliance ships had used up most of their missiles and grapeshot already. Almost two-to-one odds, and no matter what anyone else in the Alliance fleet believed, Geary didn’t think that superior fighting spirit could make up for that kind of disparity in firepower.
TEN
