Lost Fleet 1 - Dauntless Read online

  “Do you foretell the future as well as read minds?”

  “All I read are people, Captain.” Co-President Rione walked back to the hatch, pausing in the entrance. “Thank you for your time, and for your confidences.”

  “You’re welcome.” He half-rose as she left, then sat back down heavily, weary once again and wondering why his stomach felt so tight.

  * * * *

  “Kaliban?” Captain Desjani stared at Geary. “But the way home lies through Yuon.”

  “Captain, the Syndics know you’re thinking that. They’ll be there.”

  “But not in enough strength—”

  “How can you know that?” Geary realized he was snapping at Desjani and reigned in his temper. “You told me yourself. The Syndic ships in their home system could hypernet to, uh, Zaqi and then jump to Yuon in a little less time than it’d take us to get to Corvus, transit that system, and jump to Yuon. They could have their entire damned fleet there, except for the ships pursuing us, which would come out of the jump exit and hit us from the rear.”

  “But Yuon…” Desjani’s voice trailed off.

  Geary saw the desperate weariness in her and felt a stab of shame at his own anger. “I’m sorry, Tanya. I know how much you want to get home. I want to get us there, too.”

  “The Alliance needs this fleet, Captain Geary. And it needs Dauntless and what Dauntless carries. The sooner the better.”

  “The Syndics’ll be waiting for us at Yuon, Tanya. If we go that way, we won’t get home.”

  She finally nodded. “They understand us too well, don’t they?” When Geary didn’t answer immediately, Desjani continued. “The Syndics knew we’d jump at the bait they offered, the chance to hit their home system, and now they’ll know we’ll head straight home through Yuon.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “But you see clearer than that. You know we must take a longer route.”

  Geary suppressed a groan of exasperation. Maybe I just don’t have the same emotional need to get home as badly as you other people do! “I’m going to notify all ships of our planned destination before we leave jump—”

  “Captain!”

  “What?”

  Captain Desjani adopted a formal posture. “Sir, you must inform the ships’ commanding officers of this decision in person.”

  He tried to dampen an immediate flare of annoyance. “I’ve been told that if we transmit it in jump there’s zero chance of the Syndics ever intercepting the message. And in any case I’m not going to put it to a vote.”

  “I’m not saying you should put it to a vote, Captain, but you need to tell them yourself.” She must’ve read his feelings on his face. “I know this isn’t how you did things in the old days, but it’s how we’re used to doing things now.” Another pause. “Sir, you must lead personally! You can’t do that by sending a brief text message.”

  The last thing he wanted to do was face that crowd of officers again, knowing that some believed in him with all the fervor of Captain Desjani and some thought him a living fossil who needed to be cast aside. “Tanya, we’re probably going to be awfully busy every second this fleet is in the Corvus System. Even if the Syndics don’t send ships jumping into the system right on our tails, they’ll still be coming at some point. We don’t know what kind of defenses the Syndics have in Corvus. We’ll need to decide what facilities to ransack, overcome, or overawe any resistance…” Desjani just looked back at him stubbornly. Face it. My gut tells me Desjani is right. I had to convince her in person about Yuon. If she’s refusing to be convinced now, it’s because her professional judgment says I need to talk those other ship commanders into going to Kaliban.

  Nice to know Desjani won’t cave when she thinks I’m wrong even if she does believe I’m the ancestors’ gift to this fleet.

  Geary nodded, not bothering to hide his reluctance from her. “Okay, Tanya. You win. As soon as we’re certain no immediate Syndic pursuit is coming out of the jump point on our tails, I’ll call a conference and tell everyone in person that we’re going to Kaliban and not Yuon.” She didn’t answer. “Okay. I’ll also tell them why we’re going to Kaliban and not Yuon.”

  “Thank you, Captain. I hope you understand—”

  “I do. And I thank you for making clear your recommendation.”

  “Whatever waits for us at Corvus can’t be too dangerous, Captain Geary. They won’t even know the outcome of the battle in the Syndic home system.”

  “Yeah.” Maybe we’ll be able to use that somehow. “But Corvus is so close to the Syndic home world it might be a tough nut.”

  Desjani made a dismissive gesture. “It’s not on the Syndic hypernet.”

  Geary thought about the way she’d said that. “That obviously means more than I realize. Explain it to me, please.”

  She looked surprised, then nodded. “I just assumed you knew, but how could you? The hypernet lets someone go very quickly from wherever they are to wherever they want to be. They don’t have to go through other places to get there.”

  “Oh.” Damn. I said it again. “With the system jump drives you have to jump through systems within range to eventually reach where you’re headed.”

  “Yes.” Desjani nodded again. “Many, many systems only mattered because people had to go through them to get to somewhere else. They didn’t have any special resources or other significance. Once a hypernet is up, all that passing-through traffic vanishes.”

  Geary thought about that. “I can’t imagine that benefited the bypassed systems.”

  “No. The only reason someone will go to them now is if they have personal reasons or because the system has something special. But if the system does have something special, it’ll be on the hypernet.”

  He had a vision of many broken branches withering away even as the main tree flourished. “What’s happened to them?”

  She shrugged. “Some have put their resources into trying to get hypernet gates, but few have succeeded. Some have tried to make themselves special in some way so others would lobby for a gate for them. Again, few have managed that. Most were never that wealthy to begin with and have been slowly declining as trade bypasses them and they lose touch with technological and cultural developments being shared through the hypernet. The best and brightest people from such systems always seek to emigrate to hypernet-linked systems as well, of course.”

  “I see.” A bit like me. Isolated and increasingly outdated. Bypassed by the hypernet and by history. I wonder how some of these Syndic systems will react when I bring the Alliance fleet through? At least they’ll be part of history again.

  We’ll exit jump at Corvus in another week and find out just how that system has fared since being bypassed by the Syndic hypernet. I’d better work on my speech to the ship commanders, and keep praying that the Syndic plan wasn’t devious enough to include setting a trap inside Corvus for any Alliance ships that managed to jump out of their home system.

  FOUR

  The star known to humanity as Corvus glowed like a tiny, bright coin against the star-dappled black of normal space as the Alliance fleet leaped out of jump. Geary, trying hard not to show how tense he was, looked down toward his armchair controls and saw his hand gripping the chair so tightly his fingers were white. He took a deep breath and stared at the display, willing it to produce the information he needed.

  “No mines,” Captain Desjani reported.

  Geary just nodded. If there had been a minefield laid at the jump point exit they’d have already found it the hard way. But he’d felt safe in gambling that there wouldn’t be mines here. Even when system jump drives had been the only way to get from star to star, there hadn’t been many jump points guarded by minefields because they were as much a hazard to friendly shipping jumping back into normal space as they were to enemies. Deep inside Syndic territory, or Alliance territory for that matter, resources never would’ve been wasted on deploying and maintaining minefields.

  Which was the only nice thing Geary could thin
k of about being trapped so deep inside Syndic territory.

  “No nearby shipping detected on initial scans,” a watch-stander reported.

  Geary nodded again. The report didn’t mean much. They’d exited the jump point about a billion kilometers from Corvus, but Geary had long ago stopped thinking in terms of kilometers when it came to space navigation. Instead, he paid attention to the light-distance readout that reported they were eight and a half light-hours from the star. If the very old records they were relying on had been accurate, the main inhabited world orbiting Corvus was about 1.2 light-hours from its star. That meant whatever the fleet’s sensors were now seeing and analyzing around that world was a picture well over seven hours old.

  Aside from that single habitable world, Corvus boasted only three other satellites worthy of the name planet. One was a battered rock in a slightly eccentric orbit less than a light hour from the star, another a gas giant about six light-hours out, and farthest out a frozen snowball of a world, the orbit of which had it not much more than a half light-hour away from the jump point. Which meant that frozen world was also about a half light-hour away from the Alliance fleet.

  “Captain Desjani.” She turned to look at him. “It used to be routine for the Syndics to maintain defensive bases near jump points. The same sort of thing we did. I understand the Syndics have kept a lot of those bases active.”

  Desjani scowled. “We always assume the old bases remain active. If a hypernet gate is built, that gets new defenses. But for stars without hypernet, Alliance policy has been that if defensive bases are to be kept in-system, then it’s not worth the cost of moving them. The Syndics seem to have followed the same policy.”

  “That makes sense. Why waste money? The question is whether they’ll have bothered with maintaining a base this far inside their territory.” Geary rubbed his forehead, watching the display where a slowly expanding sphere around the fleet’s ships marked the area where something like a real-time picture could be established. The sphere still looked ridiculously small against the size of the star system they were invading. Fortunately, it would soon cover the orbit of the frozen world. “That means if they still have a base here, it’ll be there,” he added out loud.

  Captain Desjani nodded. “We’ll know soon. Initial optical and full spectrum scans show installations with heat signatures, so something’s still active there, but we need more data. There’s definitely not a major naval force nearby, though. We’d be seeing some signs of that by now even if the information was time-late.”

  Thank the ancestors for not-so-small blessings, Geary thought irreverently. In fact, space traffic in the system seemed light. Geary, unconsciously anticipating the sort of system jump traffic he’d been used to, instead saw no interstellar shipping passing through en route to the various jump locations. What in-system traffic had been spotted, running between the inhabited planet and what must be various off-planet mining and manufacturing sites, was confined to the plane of the system and clustered among the inner planets. Where the hell is everybody? Geary couldn’t help wondering, even though he knew that thanks to the hypernet “everybody” didn’t have to go through Corvus or systems like it anymore.

  Geary tapped a communications circuit, having painstakingly learned how to use his controls during the jump to Corvus. “This is Captain Geary for Captain Duellos and Captain Tulev. You are to take the Second and Fourth Battle Cruiser Squadrons and assume positions covering the jump exit. If any Syndic forces come through there in immediate pursuit, they must be destroyed before they can get past you.”

  Geary could almost hear the anticipation of one-sided slaughter in Duellos’ and Tulev’s voices as they rogered up for the order. On his scan, Geary watched the heavy combatants of the two squadrons swinging around and moving back toward the jump point. The battle cruisers were able to accelerate quickly for their size but were comparatively lightly defended since their acceleration had been purchased by adding more propulsion power at the expense of defensive-screen capability. He’d have to hold them there long enough to nail any Syndics coming through on the heels of the Alliance fleet, but not leave them isolated as the rest of the fleet moved away. Just a simple matter of timing, with seven big warships and the lives of their crews riding on Geary’s ability to get it right.

  Mines. How could I have forgotten that until now? I don’t care how much Syndic shipping gets disrupted. “Captain Duellos. Have your ships lay a minefield around the jump exit, slaved to the local star so it maintains position.”

  Duellos acknowledged the newest order, sounding definitely gleeful this time. The Alliance fleet had taken some heavy loses in the Syndic home system from mines laid as part of the ambush, so Geary didn’t begrudge any desire by Alliance sailors for retaliation on that count.

  Another tap on a circuit to communicate with the entire fleet. “All units, with the exception of the Second and Fourth Battle Cruiser Squadrons, are to assume standard fleet-attack formation Alpha Six immediately upon receipt of this message.” The units of the fleet, jumbled by the battle in the Syndic home system and the pell-mell retreat through the jump point, hadn’t been able to reform while in jump space and now needed to resume the semblance of an orderly formation again. Geary watched on his display as the ships and squadrons slowly acknowledged an order that took a few light-minutes to reach the farthest ships, trying not to shake his head at how scattered the fleet was.

  “The fleet is still proceeding in-system at point one light speed,” Desjani reminded him. “It’s going to take some of those ships quite a while to reach their assigned positions.”

  “Yeah.” Geary studied the display, still essentially empty of real-time threat information. “If we slow the fleet, individual ships will have an easier time taking station. But I don’t want to risk slowing the fleet until we’ve learned more about whatever Syndic force we’re hopefully surprising here.”

  “Holding back never won a battle,” Desjani stated approvingly, in the manner of someone quoting a lesson.

  Geary was still mentally shaking his head at Desjani’s statement when a chime sounded to call attention to the display. He watched as the time-late data from the inhabited world scrolled by. Analysis of imagery and things like chemical by-products in the atmosphere indicated the world was still running an industrialized economy, but with signs of inactive facilities and apparently not as heavily populated as expected given the length of time humans had been settled there. That matched what he’d heard about those systems that had been bypassed by the hypernet system slowly dying on the vine. A score of objects orbited the world, seven tagged as cold and probably mothballed and two labeled as likely military installations. No military shipping was visible in the more than eight-hour-old picture.

  “The installation on the fourth world is active and assessed military,” the reconnaissance watch reported. “Two minor combatants are active near the base as of forty-one minutes time-late.”

  Geary jerked his head around and stared at the system display of the frozen planet. They still didn’t have anything like a real-time picture of the area near the Syndic base, but as of forty minutes ago there’d been two Syndic ships there. We arrived in system less than ten minutes ago, so they won’t see us for another half hour. By then, we’ll be a lot closer to them. “Is the identification of those Syndic ships accurate? We’re sure that’s what they are?”

  Desjani frowned, probably taking the questioning of her ship’s displayed information personally. “The IDs on the ships near the base? Yes, Captain Geary. Type and Class ID is certain. Model is tentative.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Desjani gave Geary a wondering look, so he pointed at the display. “We called those things nickel corvettes in my time.”

  “Nickel?”

  “Yeah. Like the coins. They’re useful, but they don’t last long if you need to use them. Those ships were half-obsolescent when I…” Geary let his words trail off, not sure how to refer to his apparent death in battle a century ago. “
When I was last in combat,” he finally stated.

  Desjani snorted in amazement. “I’ve never seen that class of ships before. I suppose those corvettes must’ve been left here because it was easier to leave them in the hands of the local Corvus authorities than it would’ve been to dispose of them.”

  “Probably.” For a moment, Geary imagined himself at that Syndic base or on those ships as the Alliance fleet came pouring out of the jump point. If the age of those Syndic ships was any indication, this system didn’t even really qualify as a backwater in the war. Decades, at least, since Corvus had been involved in the Alliance–Syndicate Worlds war, aside from sending in taxes and doubtless occasional shipments of draft-age young adults. For a few more minutes or a few more hours, depending on where in the system they were, they’d still think they were a backwater. Then they’d finally begin to see the Alliance fleet arriving, ship after ship becoming visible as the light from their arrival finally reached the various Syndic watchers. And they wouldn’t believe it for a few minutes, would they? Wouldn’t believe that here was the war arriving, in sudden and overwhelming force.

  The fleet communications circuit came to life. “Captain Geary, this is Commander Zeas on the Truculent. We’re within weapons range of an active radar emitter focused on the jump point.”

  “This is Geary. Take it out.” He glanced at Desjani. “I know that’s just a navigational aid, but it’s probably sending contact reports to that base.”

  “I concur,” she agreed. “Though the reports will be going at light speed, so they won’t get there before visual sightings of us can take place from the base.”

  “Every couple of minutes helps. Is the base itself sending out any active sensor emissions?” Geary checked the display even as he asked, knowing the answer should be there somewhere.

  “No, sir.” Desjani indicated the proper data fields. “Did you expect that?”

  “No.” Geary almost bridled at the question, then found a moment’s amusement in it. “Even in my primitive time it was obvious that radar would take twice as long to spot something as a visual sensor would, since the radar pulse has to go and return while the light from the object only has to travel that distance once.” The difference in time was insignificant on a planet’s surface, but when the size of a battlefield was measured in light-hours it mattered a lot.