“I’m sorry, Captain,” Castries replied, looking ill. “He’s a prisoner on his own flagship? The idea of our ship turning against us, controlling us—”
“Yeah,” Desjani said. “Why would we give it the power to do that? Ask the idiots who keep coming up with the idea.”
“Do we know which ship the transmission came from?” Geary asked.
“Yes, Admiral. This one.”
On his display, one of the dark battle cruisers that had not been at Bhavan glowed brighter.
Geary shook his head, not sure whether to be angry or frustrated. “That confirms that whether or not Bloch came up with that ambush plan, he was not in command at Bhavan. But we can’t get him off that ship he is trapped on. All I can do is keep fighting the dark ships, and if Bloch sees a chance while I’m doing that, he can take it.”
“He wouldn’t have told you where Michael Geary was even if his flagship hadn’t cut Bloch off,” Desjani said. “That’s his biggest lever to get you to act on his behalf. He could always be lying about your grand-nephew being alive and in some Syndic labor camp,” she added. “Just to manipulate you to help him escape.”
“There’s no way of telling, and there is nothing I can do about it anyway. Do you think he was lying about the Armageddon Option?”
Desjani hesitated. “It sounds way too plausible. And it’s not like you needed more motivation to defeat the dark ships. But giving those ships the codes to enable them to use hypernet gates to destroy entire Alliance star systems? Who would do that?”
“Someone determined to pull everything down around them if they were losing,” Geary said. “It’s happened before, strategies designed to ensure that the victor inherited as little as possible, no matter the cost to the people on your own side. There are people I have met who I believe would adopt that idea. If the Syndics are going to own everything, destroy as much as you can to keep it from benefiting them.”
“How many billions of people in Alliance star systems would die?” Desjani demanded.
“If you’re a narcissist, that’s not the important thing,” Geary said, surprised at the viciousness in his voice. “All that matters is that you’ve lost, and you don’t want the winner to enjoy the victory. A few powerful people who didn’t care what would happen to many other people were in the right places to make that happen. We have to assume Bloch did not lie about the Armageddon Option and the gate codes. The dark ships must be destroyed before they can do those things.”
“Yes, sir.” Her smile held no humor, just agreement. “I don’t know how we can survive this, but we can do our best to ensure none of the dark ships survive, either. As long as we manage to take out one of the dark ships for every one of ours that gets destroyed, we’ll get the job done.”
He stared at his display as if concentration on it would somehow change what it portrayed. “Everything I was trained, everything I was taught, was to avoid that kind of fight. No decent commander engaged in that kind of ugly math.”
“What about a decent commander whose back is to the wall?” Desjani asked. “You got taught not to trade ship for ship. Your training has served this fleet well. But what’s our objective, Admiral?”
“Save the Alliance.”
“How do we do that, this time, without paying the necessary price? Doesn’t the decent commander do what is necessary to ensure that the sacrifice of his or her people is not in vain?”
He nodded. “That is true. But if I don’t set my attacks up right, we’ll lose our ships without taking out enough of the dark ships.”
“So do it right, Admiral.”
“Four formations,” Geary said. “Plus the Dancers. We’ll see how the dark ships handle that.”
With Desjani’s help and the simple-to-use features of his maneuvering display, Geary swiftly set up four formations, using all of the ships in his main body plus those which had been in Delta One. “All units in First Fleet, immediate execute, assume Formations Gamma One, Two, Three, and Four.”
The two Alliance groupings disintegrated, the hundreds of warships weaving onto new vectors to take their assigned places in the four new subformations. Each was in the shape of a thick coin or section of a cylinder, layers of warships that could engage in all directions and help defend each other.
Dauntless, Daring, Victorious, and Intemperate were joined by Illustrious and Incredible along with half of the remaining heavy cruisers and a quarter of the destroyers to constitute Gamma One under command of Captain Desjani. Captain Tulev’s battle cruisers and those of Captain Duellos as well as the other heavy cruisers and another quarter of the destroyers formed Gamma Two under Tulev’s command. The Second, Third, and Fourth Battleship Divisions gathered with half of the surviving light cruisers and a quarter of the destroyers into Gamma Three commanded by Captain Jane Geary, while the Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth Battleship Divisions took the rest of the light cruisers and destroyers into Gamma Four under Captain Armus.
The four fat discs of Alliance warships were arrayed in a vertical diamond, Gamma One and Three in the middle, Gamma Two above, and Gamma Four below.
The Dancers had stayed well above Geary’s ships, and now were above and slightly ahead of Gamma Two.
The five dark ship formations were all coming in from behind the Alliance ships. As Geary’s forces swung through their wide arc, the dark ships were cutting across that arc, aiming to intercept the Alliance warships by slashing through the rear of the formations at an angle of about thirty degrees.
Geary took a moment to call Captain Tulev, Captain Jane Geary, and Captain Armus. “You need to know everything we have learned about this situation.” He described what he had been told by Admiral Bloch. “That defines our mission. We must stop the dark ships here. If Dauntless or myself are unable to continue the fight, you must do so, and all of your individual ship commanders must do so. Every ship must continue this fight until every dark ship has been destroyed.”
They all nodded, Jane Geary looking stricken, and Armus bleak. Only Tulev replied in words. “To the last, Admiral.”
“To the last,” Geary agreed. The three captains saluted, he returned the gesture, then faced the battle once more.
Rearranging the Alliance warships had taken time, and Geary had held his velocity down to point one light speed during that period to help his ships take their assigned stations. He was also tired of running.
He gazed at his display, nerving himself for the sort of battle he had always sought to avoid. If they had to fight a battle of attrition, he was going to fight the best damned battle of attrition he possibly could.
“Ten minutes until the first of the dark ship formations overtakes us,” Lieutenant Castries reported. “All dark ship formations are projected to pass through the rear quarter of our formations within a span of five seconds, separated by an average of one second.”
“Textbook attack,” Desjani scoffed. “What are we going to do?”
“Mess up their textbook,” Geary said. “And then complicate their next moves.” He was entering maneuvering commands rapidly. “All units in Gamma One, Two, Three, and Four, execute attached maneuvers at time two five.”
With the dark ships racing to hit the Alliance subformations, Geary’s warships pivoted again under the push of their maneuvering thrusters, facing the enemy almost bow on, then using their main propulsion to shift their vectors. The coin-shaped formations had turned edge on toward the approaching dark ships.
The dark ships tried to adjust their own vectors to continue their planned attack, but Geary’s warships were already changing their approach again, aiming to counter the move that Geary knew he would have made if he were commanding the dark ships, the move the artificial intelligences would have been programmed to use in this situation.