Incansable (76 page)

“Be careful what you ask for,” Commander Parr from
Incredible
cautioned. “But we’ll be happy to fight alongside the other ships with us.”

Duellos looked as tired as Badaya. “The odds don’t look to be good at Varandal, and I see your projected movement will bring us to Varandal with less than twenty percent fuel-cell reserves.”

“That’s right.” Geary tried to say it casually, as if it were routine to go into battle against superior numbers with fuel-cell reserves so low that the real risk existed of warships running out of power during the engagement at Varandal. “There’s nothing we can do about the fuel-cell situation. The remaining auxiliaries are using their shuttles to distribute the fuel cells they manufactured during the last jump, and after that we’ll have to count on refueling after we deal with the Syndics at Varandal. We’ll have a better idea of the odds we face at Varandal once the Alliance escape pods can provide us with a listing of the warships that were with the Alliance force that came here. So far all we can do is estimate how many Alliance warships were lost here.”

Everybody checked the time. “The nearest pods should have seen us by now,” Captain Armus grumped. “We’ll have to wait another half hour before any message from them can reach us.”

“Unfortunately, yes. But it’s still over a day before we reach the jump point for Varandal. We have time. Too much time, but there’s nothing we can do about that.”

NOTHING but sit on the bridge of
Dauntless
, bulleting through space at point one two light speed, waiting to hear what the Alliance personnel in the escape pods could tell the fleet.

The first voice coming over the circuit from an escape pod was so distorted by mingled joy, disbelief, and stress that it was a little hard to understand. “This is Lieutenant Reynardin. I believe I’m the senior surviving officer off of the battle cruiser
Avenger
. You can’t imagine how good it is to see the Alliance fleet here. The Syndics were claiming that you’d been destroyed, but everyone said it couldn’t be true. Not our fleet. Bless our ancestors and the living stars . . .”

Geary tried to fight down a wave of annoyance as the lieutenant jabbered on. Desjani was drumming her fingers on the arm of her command chair, her own impatience obvious. It wasn’t too hard to imagine what Desjani would be saying to Lieutenant Reynardin right now if he was within shouting distance.

Rione must have read the same emotions on Geary and Desjani. “Lieutenant Reynardin has lost his ship and many of his friends and shipmates. He’s surely suffering from shock.”

“He’s a fleet officer,” Desjani replied, biting off each word. “Maybe when he gets the message from Captain Geary asking for information, he’ll actually tell us something useful.”

They could tell when that had happened a few minutes later, because Lieutenant Reynardin suddenly fell silent. When he spoke again, the lieutenant sounded half in tears. “Captain Geary. Sir. An honor . . . I . . . your orders. Yes, sir. What happened. We launched a spoiling attack. It was Admiral Tagos’s idea, to keep the Syndics off-balance.”

“Tagos?” Desjani muttered, then shook her head at Geary. “How the hell did she make admiral?”

“Admiral Tagos was on
Auspicious
,” Reynardin continued. “I didn’t see everything that hit
Auspicious
, but her power core blew, and I’m certain there weren’t any survivors.”

Geary nodded wearily, imagining from what he’d seen when he took command of the fleet that Tagos had been promoted because of political skills and “fighting spirit,” then demonstrated both by rushing into a hopeless battle.

“
Avenger
and
Auspicious
. That accounts for two Alliance battle cruisers,” Desjani noted as Reynardin rattled on in a shock-fueled stream of consciousness. “Maybe somebody else on his escape pod will take over the comm panel.”

“Let’s hope so.” With the nearest escape pods still over two light-hours away, any attempt to try to get Lieutenant Reynardin to focus on the questions he’d been asked would be a very long and tedious process.

“It was pretty terrible,” Reynardin continued. “Just . . . everything.”

“Somebody please shoot him,” Desjani ground out.

“He’s in shock,” Rione protested again.

The argument was cut off by the communications watch. “Captain, we’ve got another escape pod calling in.”

“Put it on!” Desjani ordered in the tones of someone who’d just been delivered from torment.

This officer immediately sounded like a steadier individual. “Ensign Hochin here, sir. Hell-lance battery officer on
Peerless
. I’m afraid I can only tell you the status of the Alliance forces here up to the point that we evacuated
Peerless
.”

“That’s something, anyway.” Desjani glanced at Geary. “
Peerless
was another battleship in the same division as
Dreadnaught
.”

Which meant
Dreadnaught
either hadn’t come along, or more likely had been able to escape back to Varandal. Geary felt a wave of comfort at the knowledge that his grandniece’s ship hadn’t been lost here, and guilt at his relief because it meant another ship had suffered that fate.

“We had five battle cruisers,” Ensign Hochin was saying. “I know we lost
Avenger
. Six battleships. As far as I know only
Peerless
was destroyed.”

“Oh, damn,” Desjani cursed. “I should have realized. The closest escape pods to us are from the Alliance ships destroyed earliest. The sensors on the pods are rudimentary, so they won’t have much idea of what happened after their ships were lost. To get a decent picture of how many Alliance ships made it back to the jump exit, we’ll have to wait until we hear from the escape pods off
Intractable
.”

“Another hour?” Geary guessed.

“At least.”

But Hochin was still talking. “I expect you’ll plan on wiping out the Syndics left here, but some pods off
Mantle
passed on word to us that one of the Syndic heavy cruisers picked up some of our personnel in escape pods from
Peerless
. They think it was between forty and sixty of our people, but it could have been less.”

“Damn.” Geary checked the positions of the Syndic heavy cruisers on the display. “Which one?”

“As best we can determine from the location of
Mantle
’s escape pods and their description of the course of the Syndic cruiser,” Hochin continued as if he had not heard Geary, “it should be located in an area about one and a half light-hours from the star Atalia, slightly above the plane of the system, pretty close to a line between the jump point from Kalixa and the star.
Mantle
’s people said the Syndic cruiser had heavy damage forward.”

“This one!” the combat-systems watch cried out triumphantly. “We had to work his course back, but it has to be this one.”

“Is it damaged forward?” Desjani asked.

“Yes, Captain. A lot.”

“Excellent.” Desjani nodded to Geary. “That’s one ensign who deserves a field promotion to lieutenant.”

“Remind me about that.” The heavy cruiser in question had been badly torn up forward, but apparently retained most of its propulsion capabilities. Since seeing the Alliance fleet, it had accelerated to point zero six light speed. “Can we intercept him?”

“Not the
Illustrious
formation, sir,” the operations watch reported with considerably less happiness. “After slowing to pick up these other pods, they won’t be able to accelerate fast enough to catch that cruiser.”

“What about us?” Geary asked.

The operations watch ran courses and speeds, then made a dissatisfied gesture. “The Eighth Light Cruiser Squadron on the edge of our formation farthest to starboard could manage an intercept with the least accelerating and braking, sir. The Twenty-third Destroyer Squadron could accompany them.”

Geary checked the weapons on those ships against what the Syndic heavy cruiser was assessed to have left. “That should be enough firepower, but this isn’t just about taking out that cruiser. We need to get the POWs off, and light cruisers and destroyers don’t carry Marines.”

“Ask them to surrender,” Rione urged.

“That hasn’t been a wildly successful option in the past, Madam Co-President.”

“Maybe this time will be different. What does it cost you to demand their surrender? Or at least the surrender of the Alliance personnel that they have captured?”

“Not a lot,” Geary admitted.

“You could make a deal,” Rione suggested. “Offer to trade them the continued existence of that heavy cruiser for releasing our people.”

Geary could feel the attitudes of the fleet personnel around him stiffening at the suggestion. Only Desjani spoke, though, and that as if to herself rather than addressing Rione. “Standing orders require all feasible efforts to destroy the enemy and prohibit allowing Syndic forces to escape as long as they retain any combat capability.”

As fleet commander, he could override those standing orders, but in this case that didn’t seem like the right thing to do. What else did he have to bargain with, though?

Rione looked around in frustration. “Make a deal, Captain Geary! If you won’t agree to them keeping their ship, then you still have the lives of Syndic crew in your hands!”

He blew out an exasperated breath. “Syndic commanders haven’t proven to care very much about the lives of their crews.”

“Some of them have! You’ve made comments about them, about how the crews abandoned ship too early. Why did their commanders do that if they didn’t care about their crews?”

That was a point. Those cases could have represented panic, but they also could have been the result of captains’ concern for the fate of their personnel. “And maybe if that Syndic captain isn’t that worried about the crew, they’ll be worried about their own life. It’s worth a try.” He recorded a demand and sent it off, sent orders to the Eighth Light Cruiser and Twenty-third Destroyer Squadrons to accelerate a bit more and alter course to intercept the Syndic heavy cruiser, then settled back again to wait with growing restlessness.

“Captain?” the combat-systems watch reported. “There is something odd about the damage to that Syndic heavy cruiser, the one who picked up some of the escape pods from
Peerless
.”

Desjani glanced back at the watch-stander. “Define ‘odd.’ ”

“We focused sensors on it, and analysis of the damage indicates it was caused not by multiple impacts but by a single massive blow.”

“One hit?” Desjani frowned in thought. “What could have done that?”

“Unknown, Captain. No single weapon in the Alliance inventory could inflict that kind of hit.”

Desjani frowned deeper. “What about a collision?”

The watch-stander ran some figures. “In theory, Captain, that’s possible, but the odds of a head-on collision being strong enough to inflict that much damage and not a lot more are very, very small. Whatever hit that cruiser hit it right on the bow, and not a lot tends to survive head-on strikes. It seems to have hit the entire bow, too, so it wasn’t something small.”

“Hmmm. That’s very strange. But in the absence of any evidence of another cause, we’ll have to assume a collision is what did it. Let me know if any other details show up to explain the damage.” Desjani looked back at Geary as if aware of something he hadn’t said out loud. “Sir?”

“Why’d they jump to Varandal?” he asked her.

“The Syndic reserve flotilla? To destroy what was left of the Alliance force that attacked here.”

“But their orders must have been to stop
us
before we reached Varandal. Syndics don’t improvise on their orders.” Geary glared at the display as if an answer was hidden there. “Why didn’t they stay here to hit us when we arrived?”

Desjani frowned. “They must have been ordered to go to Varandal. The Alliance warships that came here ran into the reserve flotilla on its way to the jump point for Varandal.” She tapped some commands and studied the results. “That matches the debris trail. The reserve flotilla wasn’t going to wait here for us. They must have planned on jumping before we got here, reducing Varandal’s defenses, then hitting us when we arrived home with our guard down and our fuel and weapons at the lowest possible state.”

That made sense, though something about the situation still bothered him. “It would have been easier to do all of that here at Atalia.” No one else offered suggestions, so Geary leaned back and thought, his ideas going nowhere this time.

He hadn’t realized how much time had passed until the communications watch called him. “Captain Geary, sir. The commanding officer of that Syndic heavy cruiser is offering to surrender her prisoners in exchange for your agreement not to attack the escape pods from her ship.”

Desjani’s reaction was quick. “It’s a trap. Or a trick.”

“Could be,” Geary agreed as he accepted the message.

An image of the captain of the Syndic heavy cruiser appeared. She looked defiant but her eyes had a glazed look, as if she were suffering from shock, too. “My ship cannot defend itself against your attack. I am willing to surrender my prisoners in exchange for your agreement for safe passage for my crew. I will remain aboard my ship as a hostage along with the prisoners after my crew evacuates and put up no resistance to whatever boarding parties you send in to take off the prisoners, but if any attempt is made to capture my ship or penetrate beyond the prisoner holding area, I will destroy my ship. Those are my conditions. If you do not accept them, then I will fight to the death of my ship and all who are on it.”

“You won’t get a better offer,” Rione pointed out.

“Or a more dangerous one,” Desjani countered. “She can wait until our ships close to take off the prisoners, then overload her power core.”

It wasn’t an easy decision. Syndics hadn’t exactly proven themselves trustworthy in previous dealings. “There’s something about this one,” Geary commented. “Look at her eyes. She’s seriously rattled by something.”

Desjani’s own eyes narrowed as she studied the Syndic commander. “They won here. It is odd to see her looking so dazed. Maybe she got hurt during the battle.”

“Maybe.” Everyone was waiting. Only he could decide this one. Again. He remembered Colonel Carabali’s comment about making decisions about who lives and who dies. He didn’t want to have to do that again, but he had to. “All right. I’m going to agree to her terms. It’s the only possible way to save the prisoners on her ship unless we abandon them and let the cruiser get away.”