The Lost Fleet: Fearless

HE had been dreading this sort of thing ever since being thrust into command of the fleet. Dreading a split in the fleet. It seemed obvious to him that dividing their forces while trapped deep inside enemy territory was insane, but it had been obvious from the first that not all of his ship commanders took a rational view of things. Now the precedent had been set. Almost forty ships had headed for an unknown fate under senior commanders whom Geary regarded with misgivings, distrust, and in the case of Numos no small measure of contempt. If only there had been some way for those commanders to meet the fates they deserved without those ships suffering the same fates.

But there is a chance. If they think, if they realize dying gloriously doesn’t do much to protect their home worlds, if they are willing to take advantage of what I taught them while they were with the fleet. If they’re willing to take advantage of what I told them before they left. And if the Syndics don’t hear that information from them and have time to lay an ambush for the rest of us. I wish I knew.

Unable to stand the silence of his stateroom, which seemed to have grown much lonelier since Co-President Rione had ceased dropping by for visits, Geary forced himself to tour the compartments on Dauntless again, showing a confident face to a crew shaken by the departure of many comrades, telling them in a dozen different ways that once the fleet reached Sancere they’d give the Syndics a lesson to remember, trying to focus the crew on the future rather than events in Strabo Star System. He used the minimal communications available in jump space to send a brief variation on that to the rest of the ships in the fleet, hoping to do the same with them.

In the time that was left, Geary threw himself into designing more simulations to run. He kept hoping he could use them to impart some of the fighting skills he remembered from a century ago, skills lost to the fleet in the decades since, as devastating losses in ships and crews wiped out the institutional memory and skills of the smaller professional force Geary had once known. He didn’t know how much longer he might have to try to pass on such lessons.

GEARY strode onto the bridge of the Dauntless as the Alliance fleet prepared to leave jump.

Captain Desjani glanced back at him and nodded in greeting, her concern for him impossible to miss. Geary nodded heavily back as he sank into his command seat. He hadn’t realized how bad he must look in the aftermath of Falco’s betrayal. Bad enough for Desjani to notice, anyway. Hopefully, the crew hadn’t picked up on it. Or maybe he just looked particularly bad now, after an almost sleepless night wondering what might be in the Cydoni Star System. Wondering if any other ships would bolt the fleet there.

To cover the renewed anxiety he suddenly felt, Geary called up the fleet display and pretended to study it intently. He had been trying to come up with a plan for Sancere, given that he wouldn’t know what was there until they arrived. An idea had occurred to him yesterday, prompted ironically by what had happened in the Strabo Star System, and he spent a few minutes thinking about it, checking on the names and records of some of his ship commanders.

“Preparing to leave jump,” Desjani announced.

Geary hastily brought the system display to life and waited. All it showed now was the historical information the old Syndic Star System guides they had found on Sutrah Five had contained. As soon as the fleet arrived in normal space on the edge of Cydoni System, the sensors on Dauntless and every other ship in the fleet would start updating the display based on what could be seen from their arrival point.

Geary’s insides jerked, and the drab, dull black of jump space was replaced by the glittering, star-filled universe of real space. He waited, watching, as system updates popped onto the display. No ships. No mines detected. Nothing. Captain Desjani was grinning triumphantly.

But Geary still stared at the system display, where the expanding photosphere of Cydoni’s sun had been reaching out for the one habitable world this system had once boasted. The scene held the same sick fascination as a train wreck, though in this case the centuries-long process was playing out far slower than any human vehicle accident, and the wreck was of an entire world.

Most of the atmosphere of the formerly habitable planet had been stripped away by now. Empty ocean basins had long since been drained of their waters, also flung away into space by the bombardment of particles and heat from the swollen sun that had once made life possible on this world. Now that sun was slowly devouring the planet, and no trace of life in any form could be detected anywhere upon it.

“There’s probably some extreme-environment life-forms still existing beneath the crust of the planet,” one of the watch-standers reported. “They’ll hold on a little while longer.”