“Estimate twelve hours to combat. Please ensure your crews get plenty of rest,” Geary ordered his ship captains, then went off to pretend to rest himself.
Five hours to intercept.
“They’re sprinting, sir,” Desjani reported unhappily. “To get to the jump point for Branwyn before us. They started accelerating about an hour ago, but we just saw it. We can send some battle cruisers ahead to try to still make the intercept before the Syndics get to the jump point, but the entire fleet can’t accelerate fast enough to do it.”
Throw unsupported battle cruisers at that Syndic formation? He could add in some light cruisers and destroyers as well, but that would still leave the battle cruisers badly outgunned. “No. We can’t risk the battle cruisers that way.”
Desjani stiffened, her affronted pride clear. “Sir, battle cruisers are proud of their role as the fast-moving strike force of the fleet. We can hit the enemy fast and repeatedly while the rest of the fleet catches up.”
We, of course. Dauntless being a battle cruiser, too. “I appreciate that, Captain Desjani, but in this case we’d have to divert the Syndic flotilla from their current course in order for it to make sense to separate the battle cruisers from the rest of the fleet. Our battle cruisers simply don’t have enough firepower to achieve that against a force the size of the Syndic flotilla.” He leaned closer to speak very quietly. “You know I couldn’t send Dauntless with such a strike force anyway. She’s the fleet flagship, and she carries something critically important.” He meant the Syndic hypernet key, something that could have a decisive effect on the war if they could get it home to Alliance space. Every ship in the fleet was important, but some were more important than others. Because of that hypernet key, Dauntless was by far the most important of the important.
Desjani knew that and couldn’t argue with it, so even though she still looked unhappy, she nodded in agreement.
Now Geary had to sit and watch the Syndic flotilla get to the jump point first. They’d timed their move right, leaving the Alliance fleet without enough time to respond. But when the two fleets closed to battle, he’d teach the Syndics a few things about timing maneuvers to discomfort the other side.
At point one light speed, the enemy flotilla covered thirty thousand kilometers per second. On the scale of a planetary surface, the speed was unfathomable. Against the size of even an average solar system like Lakota, where the orbital diameter of the farthest-out officially designated planet spanned about ten light-hours or roughly eleven billion kilometers, ships seemed to crawl against the star-filled darkness. Geary had sometimes wondered how people had been able to stand it in the early days of human space flight, when ships hadn’t been able to achieve velocities of anywhere near a tenth of the speed of light and been forced to take weeks, months, or even years to reach other planets and moons in just a single solar system. But he supposed people living on planets then probably had trouble grasping that once it had taken weeks, months, or years for travelers to cross continental landmasses.
“No matter how fast we go, it’s never fast enough,” Geary muttered.
To his surprise, Desjani appeared taken aback by the comment. “Sir, if the fleet could do more—”
“Sorry. That wasn’t about the fleet. The fleet’s doing wonders, as usual. No, I was just thinking about people.”
“I see, sir.” No, she obviously didn’t, but since the honor of her ship and the fleet wasn’t at stake and there were enemies to watch, Desjani was willing to let it go.
Geary did, too, watching the Syndics reach for the jump point for Branwyn and hoping they wouldn’t do what he fully expected them to do when they got there.
They did.
“They’re finally turning toward us,” Desjani announced. “They braked heavily to cross the jump point, and now they’re accelerating toward us.”
Geary exhaled, wishing something would start going right, partly relieved that he no longer had to dread what had finally happened and partly tense because it had happened. “I need confirmation as soon as possible. Did they lay mines when they went past the jump point?” That seemed the only possible explanation for the braking maneuver, to slow the ships down so the mines could be laid fairly close together, but it could have been a bluff as well.
“Yes, sir,” a watch-stander reported. “Our sensors are still trying to evaluate the minefield’s density and limits, but we’re picking up many visual anomalies. It looks like they dropped a lot of mines right off the jump point.”
Desjani frowned. “That close? Look at it, sir. The mines are so close the presence of the jump point will cause them to drift out of position fairly quickly.”
“Fairly quickly meaning what?” Geary asked, feeling a leap of hope.
“A few weeks, maybe,” Desjani offered. “The physics of an area that close to a jump point are a little weird, but we can run an analysis for a better estimate.”
“Unless that estimate is a lot less than a few weeks, it won’t do us much good.” He took another look as the fleet’s sensors painstakingly searched out the tiny visual anomalies that even the best stealth mines revealed, drawing in a depiction of where the mines were. Right on top of the jump point, just as Desjani had commented.
They would drift out of position in a few weeks, maybe, but until then couldn’t be bypassed unless the Alliance fleet slowed to almost a dead stop to make a very tight turn. And if the Alliance warships did that, they’d be sitting ducks for Syndic Flotilla Bravo making high-speed firing runs. “I liked it better when the Syndics were underestimating us,” Geary remarked to Desjani in a low voice.
“Once we’ve destroyed that Syndic flotilla, we can maneuver around those mines safely. Or maybe wait in this system until the mines move out of the way,” Desjani suggested.
“Maybe.” Wait a few weeks in Lakota? It didn’t sound like a good idea. The longer they stayed here, the worse things seemed to get.
“Syndic Flotilla Bravo is steadying on an intercept course with us,” the maneuvering watch announced. “Still accelerating, now back up to point zero five light.”
“They’ll come back up to point one light for the engagement,” Desjani predicted. “That’s standard practice for them.”
“And for the Alliance,” Geary reminded her. “But I won’t bring our ships up to point one light for a while yet.”
“If the Syndics come up to point one light and hold it there,” Desjani noted as she ran some calculations, “and we maintain point zero seven light, then we now have about one and one half hours to contact.”
“Okay.” Geary thought for a moment, then called all of his ships. “All units in the Alliance fleet, we expect combat in approximately one hour. Maintain your places in formation, and I promise you we’ll teach these Syndics the same things we taught the other Syndic flotillas we’ve encountered.”
He didn’t expect a reply, but one came from back in the formation. “Advise time we should accelerate to engagement speed of point one light.”
Geary checked the identification of the message and confirmed his suspicions. It had sounded like Captain Midea of Paladin, and it was. “We will accelerate prior to contact with the Syndics. I will order that and any formation changes at the appropriate times.”
“She’s going to ask what the appropriate times are,” Desjani murmured.
“This is Paladin,” another message came in on the heels of Desjani’s prediction. “Clarify appropriate times.”