“I can’t believe I’m talking about this.” Geary shook his head, walking slowly to one side of the room and then back. He had to make a firm stand on this, both on the outside and in his own mind. “I won’t accept Badaya’s offer.”
Duellos smiled. “Good. Not that I believed you would, but the stakes are so high, it feels comforting to be told so directly. I wouldn’t want to be on the opposite side from you.”
“That makes two of us,” Geary replied with his own smile. “I think we’ll always be on the same side.”
“Tanya Desjani would follow you. She’d be torn, but she’d be loyal to you.”
“Why are you telling me that?”
“Because I don’t think you’d ever ask her to break her oath, and she surely wouldn’t under any other conditions, but I wanted you to know that she would do what you asked.”
“Thanks.” Though Geary wasn’t sure why Duellos had wanted him to know that. “How do you feel about going to Lakota now? Still worried?”
Duellos smiled slightly again. “Aren’t you? It’s a risk. Anyplace we go from here is a risk. I think it’s a risk worth taking. Sooner or later, no matter how well we guess and plan, our luck will run out, and this fleet will find itself in serious trouble. We might as well die like warriors reaching for the stars rather than like mice hiding in shadows.”
“Even if there’s a lot of Syndics at Lakota, that doesn’t mean this fleet will die.”
“Hopefully not. But if it does, you’ve helped us even the odds after the disaster in the Syndic home system. If we take enough Syndics with us when we go, the Alliance will still have a chance.” Duellos saluted. “I’ll see you in Lakota.”
“We’ve got company, sir.”
Geary jerked awake in his darkened stateroom at the sound of Desjani’s voice, slapping the comm panel to acknowledge the message. “How many?”
“Eight Syndic capital ships have arrived in Ixion via the jump point from Dansik. Four battleships and four battle cruisers, accompanied by six heavy cruisers and a standard mix of light cruisers and HuKs. They’re about two light-hours distant, relative bearing off of our starboard beam, moving at about point one light as of two hours ago.”
“They’ve probably turned toward us since then.”
“Yes, sir. Here it is. We’re seeing the turn start now, but I don’t think they’ll try an intercept. We’re four hours and ten minutes from arrival at the jump point to Lakota.”
“No,” Geary agreed. At point one light just covering two light-hours’ distance would take twenty hours. Since the Syndics were coming toward the Alliance fleet at an angle as the Alliance ships kept moving, the distance to be covered would be even greater. “They’ll trail us through whatever jump exit we use and come in behind us there.” The enemy had been sighted, but there was absolutely nothing to do about it. Turning his own fleet to intercept the Syndics would be worse than useless, since the new flotilla would simply avoid action while awaiting more reinforcements. “Thanks for the information. Continue on course for the jump point to Lakota.”
“Yes, sir,” Desjani replied.
He lay back down, feeling guilty. Desjani was on the bridge, monitoring the situation and watching the enemy, while he was in his stateroom in bed. Of course there was nothing he could do on the bridge, but it still felt wrong.
One of Rione’s hands snaked slowly over his chest. “They’ll be coming after us to Lakota?” she murmured in his ear.
“Yeah. Sorry that woke you.”
“That’s all right. You’ll probably have trouble getting back to sleep.” Her hand slid lower. “There’s no sense in wasting us both being awake, is there?”
News of Syndic warships arriving in this star system didn’t seem to have upset Rione. Or maybe she was trying to distract him from his worries. Or maybe she was still very worried about what would happen at Lakota and really didn’t want to waste any opportunities together.
After a few moments, he stopped caring about her motivation.
Geary sat on the bridge of Dauntless, eyeing the display showing his fleet. He’d arranged it in an old formation known as Echo Five, consisting of five subformations resembling coins, each a disk facing forward with a little depth to it. Leading the fleet was Echo Five One, built around the remnants of Captain Cresida’s Fifth Battle Cruiser Division plus the understrength Seventh Battle Cruiser Division. Two battle cruiser divisions totaling only five ships combined. That was depressing if he dared think about it. With the heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers attached, the vanguard had decent fighting capability.
On either side of the main body sat Echo Five Two and Five Three, Five Two containing the eight battle cruisers of the First and Second Divisions plus plenty of lighter units, while Five Three was built around the eight battleships of the Second and Fifth Divisions plus lighter support. In the rear of the fleet, Echo Five Five contained the four auxiliaries, the damaged warships with them including Warrior, Orion, and Majestic, plus Indefatigable, Defiant, and Audacious from the Seventh Battleship Division.
The remaining five battle cruisers, including Dauntless, the thirteen other battleships, and the two scout battleships, formed the core of the main body in Fox Five Four, the rest of the heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers escorting them. Taken all in all, the Alliance fleet should be able to handle anything it encountered coming out of the jump exit at Lakota.
“All units have slowed to point zero four light speed,” Captain Desjani reported. “All units report prepared to jump.”
Geary nodded slowly, hoping he wasn’t finally making the mistake he’d dreaded since assuming command of this fleet. “All units, be prepared for combat upon exiting jump at Lakota. All units, jump now.”
EIGHT
Five and a half days to Lakota. Another five and a half days of staring at the endless gray nothingness of jump space.
“Are you all right?” Rione asked him.
“Worried,” Geary replied, keeping his eyes on the display.
She sat down next to him, her own gaze going to the display. “So tell me, how was it in the lights of jump space?”
“Very funny.”
“I’m not entirely joking, you know.” Rione took a deep breath. “Do you remember anything?”
He glanced at her. “You mean from survival sleep?”
“Yes. A hundred years. There aren’t a lot of people who’ve been kept suspended that long and lived. Only one I know of, actually.”
“Lucky me.” Geary thought about the question. “I don’t honestly know. Sometimes I think I remember dreams, but those could be memories of dreams before the battle at Grendel. I jumped into the escape pod as my ship was about to blow up without time to have thought about the battle or what had happened, and when the doctors in this fleet woke me up, it was as if I’d only been asleep for a few moments. I didn’t believe them at first. Thought it was some Syndic trick. I couldn’t believe that everyone I’d ever known was dead, everything I’d known lost a hundred years in the past.”
“And then you found out you’d become Black Jack Geary, mythical hero of the Alliance,” Rione added softly.
“Yeah. The only thing that saved me was having to take command of this fleet. It forced me to pull out of my defensive shell.” He remembered the ice that had once filled him, the cold that had tried to wall out the world around him. “If not for that…” Geary shook his head.