cruiser tried to pass by too close.
It physically hurt to watch the three battleships being pounded by increasingly overwhelming numbers of Syndic warships, but they were accomplishing their mission. The leading elements of the Syndic flotilla were slowed, hurt, or evading, and the Alliance fleet was within reach of the jump point. They’d bought the time they needed at the price of three battleships and their crews.
The Alliance fleet came at the jump point from slightly above and to one side, about to clear the Syndic minefield. “All units, reduce speed to point four light and follow Dauntless’s movements,” Geary ordered. With every second critical, he didn’t want to order exact courses now or worry about every unit maintaining its precise location in the formation.
Dauntless had pivoted around, her bow to the enemy now, and her main propulsion units kicking in again to force her velocity down. All around her, the other ships in the fleet were doing the same with varying degrees of quickness depending on the state of their propulsion units.
And the displays updated as the Syndics kept coming, getting past the reeling ships of the Seventh Battleship Division, closing faster now that the Alliance warships had been forced to slow down.
Desjani was watching the display intently as Dauntless crested the estimated top of the Syndic minefield to one side of the jump point. “Alter course down one eight zero degrees, port zero five degrees, now,” she ordered.
Dauntless swung over and down, as if diving toward the jump point, the rest of the Alliance warships following suit in a wave.
The Syndic force that they had last seen at Ixion, built around four battleships and four battle cruisers, chose that exact moment to flash into existence and make an automated turn up, the arriving Syndics and the fleeing Alliance forces right on top of each other in an instant’s time.
The only thing that prevented last-minute disaster was that the Syndics hadn’t been expecting to encounter an enemy force literally the moment they arrived at Lakota. In the few seconds required for the Syndic crews to recognize what was happening, then activate and give firing approval to their weapons, the frantic Alliance warships surrounding them unleashed a firestorm of hell lances that wiped out the lighter units and ripped open three of the four battle cruisers.
But the four battleships blundered onward, shields shredding under the Alliance fire but now shooting back desperately as the heavy enemy warships headed straight for the four auxiliaries. With only seconds before contact, Titan, Witch, Jinn, and Goblin didn’t have time to evade.
But Warrior, Orion, and Majestic were still there, still hanging as close to the auxiliaries as they could. Orion seemed to shy away in the moments before contact, and Majestic was slightly to one side, but Warrior was right between the auxiliaries and the Syndic battleships. She held her ground, pouring hell-lance fire from her working batteries into the enemy warships while the four Syndic battleships pounded back at the single Alliance battleship.
If the fight had lasted for more than seconds, Warrior would have been doomed, but the Syndic battleships veered away in panicked flight, two of them riddled by Alliance fire and barely operational. Warrior, torn up anew by Syndic fire, doggedly kept up as the auxiliaries fled toward the jump point with the rest of the fleet.
In a matter of moments the Alliance fleet had met the arriving Syndic force, decimated it, then passed onward, taking more damage itself and leaving the shocked Syndic survivors in their wake.
There wasn’t much left of the Seventh Battleship Division. The Syndic battleships had caught up with it and were now methodically smashing Audacious, Defiant, and Indefatigable. Indefatigable only had a single hell-lance battery still firing. Audacious was silent, a ball of wreckage falling off to one side. Defiant took several broadsides almost simultaneously and blew apart as two massive explosions erupted amidships and near the stern.
“Captain Geary? Captain Geary! The fleet is at the jump point!”
He tore his eyes from the final moments of Defiant, trying not to notice the debris of battle that seemed to fill the universe, the Syndic missiles reaching for the trailing ships in the Alliance fleet, the crippled Alliance warships straining to keep up with their fellows, the broken wrecks of the Syndic warships that had run head-on into the Alliance fleet at the jump point tumbling away. “All units. Jump now.”
The stars vanished. The blackness between the stars disappeared. The last gasps of Defiant, Indefatigable, and Audacious were gone. So were the distant, abandoned wreck of Paladin and the equally far-off constellation of debris which was all that remained of Renown. The hypernet gate had vanished, the Syndic flotillas gone with it. Where an instant before desperate battle had raged and the wreckage of battles littered space, now there was only the endless gray nothingness, the silence and the wandering lights of jump space.
He’d never jumped straight out of battle, never imagined fighting literally on a jump point’s doorstep. Geary felt his heart pounding, his breath sounding loud in the sudden hush that filled Dauntless’s bridge as everyone sat stunned by the abrupt transition from combat to stillness. He closed his eyes, trying to deal with the reality of what had happened. Three more battleships gone. Four battleships and one battle cruiser lost all told. Two heavy cruisers. Light cruisers and destroyers. Dozens more warships in the fleet with significant damage. Most of the remaining Syndic fleet in hot pursuit and still far outnumbering the Alliance fleet’s survivors. The Syndics would take a little while to get organized, to finish off Defiant, Indefatigable, and Audacious; then they’d come through that jump point. They couldn’t touch the Alliance fleet in jump space. They couldn’t even see the Alliance ships here, where every group of ships seemed to occupy its own drab reality.
But the Alliance fleet would come out of jump at Ixion, and the Syndics would come out behind them.
Geary stood up, feeling as if he had spent several days straight in the command seat. He looked toward Captain Desjani, who gazed somberly back at him. He should say something. “Thank you, Captain. Dauntless did well. Please see to your ship’s damage and your crew.”
Looking up, Geary saw the watch-standers gazing back at him as if they were about to drown and he were a lifeline. What to say to them? “Well done.”
He started to leave, but a young lieutenant spoke desperately. “What’ll we do, sir? At Ixion?”
Damned if he knew. “I’ll consider my options.” He forced a look of reassurance. “We’re not beaten.” Technically, at least, that was correct.
They nodded and looked comforted as Geary left the bridge, Rione going along silently beside him.
THE grayness of jump space seemed to have invaded his soul. Geary sat in his stateroom, slumped in a seat, his mind running in endless circles while ships died over and over again in his memory.
“It’s been a full day,” Rione said in a hard voice. She was sitting nearby, her face looking like she’d aged a decade or maybe two in that day. “Get over it. We have to prepare for Ixion.”
“Ixion?” Geary didn’t bother laughing scornfully. “Just what am I supposed to do at Ixion?”
“I don’t know. I’m not the commander of this fleet. And if you don’t do something, you won’t be the commander much longer either.”
“If that’s an oblique reference to the fact that this fleet’s destruction at Ixion seems inevitable-”
“No!” Rione made a choking motion with her hands. “It’s not. That’s a major problem and one I can’t help you with, because I don’t know how to command a fleet. But it’s not just the Syndics you have worry about,” Rione stated. “Your fate, your standing, is bound up in the fate and condition of this fleet. Right now this fleet is wounded, and that means you are, too. What happens to a wounded stag, John Geary?”
The vision that brought up wasn’t comfortable, but he recognized the truth of her words. “It becomes an attractive target for wolves, who gather, attack, and pull it down.”
“You know some of the wolves in this fleet but not all of them. They’ve been testing you since you took command, looking for weaknesses, trying to trip you up. But you kept winning, kept guessing right, so they couldn’t attract enough support. Now there’s blood in the water, and at the next opportunity, they’ll go after you.”
“You’re mixing your prey and predator metaphors,” Geary noted sourly.
“The results are the same for the prey regardless of the nature of the predator. The first opportunity your opponents in this fleet get after we arrive in Ixion, they will move against you, and because of what happened at Lakota, you will get little support from the disillusioned and the frightened.”
Geary managed to work up enough feelings to glare at her. “If this little speech of yours is supposed to be inspiring me to get going again, I have to let you know that your motivational skills could use some work.”
She glared back. “Do you think you’ll be the only target then? I’m known as your ally and your lover. At least some of your opponents in this fleet have learned that my husband was still alive when captured. Yes, I’m certain
