Valiant

annihilating all of the major Syndic combatants currently within reach.

An alert pulsed on his display, drawing Geary’s attention. “The automated combat system is recommending we volley rocks at the Casualty Flotilla.”

“Kinetic projectiles at ships? Those ships are too badly damaged to maneuver much, but it wouldn’t take much to avoid rocks thrown at them from any significant distance.” Desjani made a face, checking the recommendation herself. “We’d have to throw a lot of our supply of rocks out there to form a pattern that would have a decent probability of scoring any hits.”

“Doesn’t seem worth it to me,” Geary agreed. “Hey, what about Audacious?”

“The recommended pattern would avoid hitting the hulk of Audacious, as long as Audacious didn’t maneuver. Which she could if her tugs yank her off her current course, and walk right into one of our rocks.” Desjani shook her head. “And what if the debris from some of the hits on the warships struck the repair ships that we want to loot? Only an artificial intelligence would think this was a good option. I’d give the combat system a ‘disregard option’ instead of just a ‘recommendation noted.’ Otherwise, it’ll keep trying to refine the recommendation and annoying you with updated alerts about it.”

“Good idea.” He thumbed the right commands, hoping the disregard order would work since automated systems sometimes seemed able to ignore such commands and kept insistently pushing options they had already been told to forget about. Another case of automated systems acting a little too human at times. “Any idea what made that big hole in Audacious? It looks like something blew inside.”

Desjani only glanced at her display. “That was her null-field projector self-destructing. The Syndics don’t have null-field weapons yet, so there’s a multiple-redundant self-destruct capability. Just like for Alliance hypernet keys. We don’t want them to fall into enemy hands, either.”

“Have any of them ever self-destructed when they weren’t supposed to?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. The weapons-design bureau assured us that it can’t possibly happen, so we don’t worry about it.” Desjani spoke with apparent total seriousness, but couldn’t quite keep from smiling at the actual absurdity of her statement. While declarations from the weapons design bureau were supposed to be nonfiction, sailors soon learned from experience to treat them all as fantasy until confirmed by real-world events.

Geary barely managed not to laugh. “Of course not.” His alert chimed to mark the arrival of Colonel Carabali’s plan. He skimmed through it, stealing occasional looks at the display to make sure nothing unexpected was happening.

The Marine plan was simple enough, using detachments from all four of the battleships accompanying the Alliance auxiliaries, which were heading straight for the Syndic Casualty Flotilla of which Audacious was a part. Most of the Marines would assault Audacious, using every shuttle available from the battleships and Captain Cresida’s battle cruisers. In addition, each boarding team from an Alliance auxiliary would be accompanied by a single Marine fire team to check for booby traps on the repair ships or some Syndic fanatic determined to die fighting.

He paused at the situation assessment. “I hadn’t noticed the Syndics evacuating Audacious,” he remarked to Desjani.

She checked her own display, tapping some recall commands, then nodded. “They pulled out when the other Syndics were bailing out of the repair ships. That’s why we didn’t notice it, but if you do a situation replay, you can see it clearly enough. There’s no change in the readings from Audacious, so they didn’t vent atmosphere or anything like that.”

“Let’s hope it simplifies things.” He marked the plan approved and sent it back. Even though the Marines had been told they didn’t need positive approval, a clean paper trail on orders usually made people happy.

Ten minutes later, as Geary watched for the arrival of the pursuit force and felt pressure building in his head from the growing tension, he got another alert, this time a high-priority communication. Geary barely suppressed a groan when he saw the identification tag. Captain Casia of Conqueror, one of the biggest openly pain-in-the-butt senior officers whom he had to deal with right now. But this might be legitimately important. Not likely coming from Casia, but he couldn’t risk blowing it off. He tapped the acknowledge control and a window showing Casia’s frowning face popped into existence. “Captain Geary,” Casia stated heavily, “I’ve been informed that Marines attached to my ship will be employed in an operation to rescue presumed Alliance prisoners being held by the Syndics on the wreck of Audacious.”

Geary glanced at Conqueror’s position. Ten light-seconds away. Not too annoying a delay in communications, even if the communication itself looked like it would be annoying. “That’s correct, Captain Casia,” Geary stated in formal tones, then waited to see what Casia’s problem was this time.

“I’ve also been informed that there is no fleet command oversight for the Marines involved,” Casia ground out.

Geary gave Casia’s image a perplexed look. “That’s incorrect, Captain Casia. I’m exercising command over Colonel Carabali, who is in turn directing the Marines according to my orders.”

Twenty seconds later, Casia’s image frowned even deeper as his reply showed up. “Perhaps oversight of Marines on fleet missions was much laxer before the war. I’m talking about the routine practice of fleet officers conducting direct supervision of Marine officers and senior enlisted who are engaged in ship-boarding operations.”

“What?” The command and control systems allowed higher-ranking individuals to see and hear whatever any particular Marine in battle armor was doing, something that Geary thought an occasionally useful but usually dangerously distracting option. Geary muted his comm circuit and pivoted slightly to stare at Desjani. “Captain Desjani, is it true that fleet officers routinely look over the shoulder of Marines engaged in ship-boarding ops?”

Desjani rolled her eyes in aggravation. “Who brought that up?”

“Captain Casia.”

“That figures. Sir,” she added hastily as if suddenly remembering she was discussing the issue with her fleet commander. Desjani sighed, ran one hand through her hair, then spoke in a monotone. “Such oversight for warship boarding has been routine as long as I’ve been in the fleet.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s feared that Marines boarding a warship will punch the wrong buttons and wreck or blow up important things, including the ship.”

“Am I wrong in assuming that the Marines have orders not to punch buttons unless they know what they’re doing?” Geary demanded.

Desjani shrugged. “Of course they have orders not to punch strange buttons, sir. But they are Marines.”

That was a point, Geary had to admit. Thousands of years of human technological advancement had yet to produce a single piece of equipment that was Marine-proof, or sailor-proof, for that matter. That was one of the main reasons why chief petty officers in the fleet and sergeants in the Marines had no fear of being rendered obsolete, since one of their primary functions remained to yell, “Don’t Touch Anything Unless I Tell You To,” at the more-junior enlisted whenever necessary. But because the Marines did have sergeants, Geary didn’t see what purpose was served by having fleet officers tag along with the Marines via the command and control system. “What level of officers are we talking about? The ones assigned to this oversight of Marines?”

“Ships’ commanding officers,” Desjani replied in the same monotone.

“You’re kidding.”

“No, sir.”

“Who’s supposed to be commanding their ships while they’re supervising junior Marine officers?”

Desjani’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “I asked that same question of Admiral Bloch the last time I was assigned to stay on the shoulder of a Marine second lieutenant as he led a platoon aboard a Syndic warship. Admiral Bloch informed me that he had every confidence that an officer of my skills and experience could easily do both things at once.”

Not for the first time, Geary felt a guilty sense of relief that Admiral Bloch had died before Geary had been required actually to serve as Bloch’s subordinate. “I think I can already tell the answer to this, but do you personally see any good reason for doing that?”

Another shrug. “It’s possible to find reasons, but there’s plenty of reasons not to do it, too. I wouldn’t ever do it by choice, sir.”