Valiant

“Captain Desjani,” the engineering watch-stander called. “Dauntless just went below fifty percent on fuel cell reserves. ”

Desjani nodded, then glanced at Geary. “The old girl’s never been this low before.”

The “old girl” had left her commissioning dock less than two years ago, but it was still a chilling thing to hear. If they didn’t manage to loot those Syndic repair ships, the Alliance fleet wouldn’t get much farther home. Warships couldn’t run on prayers.

Forty minutes since they’d arrived in Lakota again. So far things looked very good. But how much longer would they have before the massive Syndic pursuit force came in behind them, determined to ensure that the Alliance fleet didn’t escape again?

TWO

POURING over the top of the Syndic minefield, the jumbled warships of the Alliance fleet had accelerated onto individual vectors. For a moment, the sight of it had brought to Geary’s mind the chaotic arrival in Corvus right after he’d assumed command, the Alliance fleet breaking into a wild scramble to attack a few weak Syndic warships. But this time was far different. This time the Alliance warships were following orders, tearing off on courses and speeds that would bring coordinated attacks to bear on every Syndic warship the fleet could reach. Even those officers who didn’t like the way Geary fought shouldn’t have any problems here, with so many targets available for the ships of the Alliance fleet.

With the orders given, the fleet reacting as it should, and no Syndic pursuit force yet showing up astern, Geary had one of those lulls created by the vast distances of a star system. Even with his ships accelerating to point one light speed, it would take more than an hour and a half just to cover the ten light-minutes separating the fleet from that big Syndic formation of damaged warships and repair ships. But the Syndics were also moving away from the Alliance ships, though unable to do so nearly as fast the Alliance fleet was charging at them.

“Estimated time to intercept one point seven hours,” Desjani grumbled. “They’re running, but we’ll still be on them well before those two Syndic battleships can reach us.”

“We’ll have to make sure those battleships are stopped dead before they can smash their way through to any of our auxiliaries.” On Geary’s display, paths arced through space as Alliance destroyers and light cruisers pulled ahead of the heavier combatants, aiming not only for the largest Syndic formation but also smaller groups and individual ships. “Call it two more hours before we take those Syndic ships. We’ll be lucky if we achieve that before the Syndic pursuit comes in behind us.”

“Do you suppose any more Syndic reinforcements showed up here after we left?” Desjani wondered.

“Good question. We can’t assume the totals we saw at Lakota last time we were here reflect what the Syndics have available now and in the pursuit force. But it looks like what’s here is going to fight.” Geary watched some of the damaged warships that had been proceeding independently toward the inner planets alter their vectors to come around and head toward individual rendezvous with the two battleships, trying to build a scratch task force. Counting up the ships involved, and their states of repair, Geary shook his head. He knew how they were feeling, badly outnumbered and not prepared for this kind of battle. His own fleet had faced a similar situation when it had last been at Lakota.

Out of the almost eighty Syndic battleships and battle cruisers the Alliance fleet had once faced at Lakota, at least six Syndic battleships and ten Syndic battle cruisers had been destroyed during those battles. Alliance sensors had also been able to confirm twenty Syndic heavy cruisers destroyed then, as well as dozens of light cruisers and Hunter-Killers. But numerous Syndic warships had been badly damaged as well, some of them by Audacious, Indefatigable, and Defiant as they fought to the last. Those damaged Syndic ships had been left behind here when the Syndic commander took a strike force in pursuit of the fleeing Alliance fleet.

The large formation of crippled Syndic ships included four battleships and no less than seven battle cruisers as well as thirteen heavy cruisers. Trying to close with that formation of badly hurt warships right now in addition to the two combat-effective battleships from the guard force were one more battleship, two battle cruisers, and another three heavy cruisers, all of which had suffered significant damage. Scattered around them were about a dozen light cruisers and HuKs, which had been limping for repair docks, and some of those were also trying to join in the defense of their helpless fellows.

He ran out the course vectors and the times. If all of those ships managed to join together, it would create a weak but dangerous flotilla. But with the distances involved and the propulsion damage so many had suffered, the Syndic defenders could only arrive in staggered waves of a few ships at a time unless they pulled back and tried to form up farther away from the Alliance fleet, at the cost of letting the Alliance ships tear apart the big formation unhindered. That would buy the Syndics a little time, but not enough to save them unless the pursuit force came through that jump point a lot sooner than Geary hoped.

A pair of tugs had been dragging a riddled Syndic heavy cruiser only three light-minutes from the jump point. The unlucky heavy cruiser must have been forced to wait the longest for a tow to show up. Now, with no hope of running away from the Alliance destroyers and light cruisers heading for them, the crews of the tugs abandoned ship, escape pods spitting frantically from the slow, clumsy vessels. Several escape pods erupted from the heavy cruiser itself as well, marking the flight of the salvage crew left aboard the ship.

The Alliance destroyers Jinto and Herebra reached the tugs first and blew them into fragments with close-in hell-lance fire before altering course to head for their next targets. Right behind them, Contus, Savik, and the light cruisers Tierce, Ward, and Lunge rolled past above and to port of the abandoned heavy cruiser, hell lances slamming repeatedly into the hulk until it shattered into multiple fragments. “Let’s see them recover that,” Geary remarked.

“There goes another one,” Desjani noted gleefully, as a solitary Syndic light cruiser whose remaining crew had also abandoned ship came apart under the fire of a half dozen Alliance destroyers.

Struck by a sudden thought, Geary sent out orders. “Ocrea, pick up some of the escape pods from that Syndic heavy cruiser. I want to know what the crew members from that ship can tell us about how long it took the pursuit force to jump after us and anything else they can tell us about the pursuit force.” One of his own heavy cruisers, Ocrea wouldn’t have interrogation facilities anything like those on Dauntless, but he didn’t have the luxury of the time to get those prisoners to a capital ship for questioning. Hopefully some of the Syndic crew members would spill their guts after the shock of having the Alliance fleet reappear and destroy their ship.

It was also time to update the maneuvering plan based on what the Syndics were doing. The Syndic defensive moves had actually simplified the Alliance requirements. As Syndic warships came together, Alliance ships that had been dispersed to hit each one individually could also merge into larger formations. Geary frowned at the display, where the enemy flotilla filled with damaged warships had been tagged with the name Casualty Flotilla. The tactical systems automatically named enemy formations, so he was surprised that one had a specific status designator rather than a generic name like “Flotilla Alpha.” It was always a little unnerving to him when automated support systems acted a bit too human.

He wasn’t trying anything fancy that would require a lot of maneuvering. The subformations would be concentrated into loose, larger formations, which would sweep directly over the largest Syndic formation, the Casualty Flotilla, then onward to hit the less-badly damaged warships trying to form into their own flotilla, then soon afterward the two battleships racing outward from the guard force. “How’s this look to you?” he asked Desjani.

She studied it, face intent. “A series of fast firing runs over the Casualty Flotilla to knock out the weapons on the Syndic warships that have any working? You don’t want to destroy them right away?”

“Not until our auxiliaries are done looting their repair ships. I don’t want to risk debris from destroyed warships messing up our pillaging operation. We can finish off everything when we pull away from the Casualty Flotilla. We’ll have four of our battleships with the auxiliaries then.”

Desjani nodded. “Even the Third Battleship Division should be able to handle destroying enemy ships with all of their systems knocked out. But you need to leave a couple of more battleships or battle cruisers with the formation