Valiant

The reply took only a little while, though it seemed agonizingly long. “Sir, this is Lieutenant Commander Pastak on Gavelock. Arabas, Balta, Dao, Gavelock, Kururi, Sabar, and Wairbi volunteer to assist Warrior’s crew. All ships proceeding to intercept Warrior at maximum acceleration.”

Geary checked his display. Every surviving destroyer in the squadron. “Don’t let me forget this,” he murmured to Desjani.

“I won’t,” she replied. “Did you expect anything else?”

“I don’t know. I do know I am proud as hell to command this fleet.”

“Estimated time for destroyers to reach Warrior is twenty-three minutes,” the maneuvering watch announced.

“Try to get a message through to Warrior’s survivors that the destroyers are on the way.”

“Yes, sir. We are now in communication with the escape pods launched from Warrior and will try to relay through them.”

Geary nodded almost absently, his mind’s eye too easily imagining the scene on Warrior right now, the few sailors who could work on the power core trying to keep it under control, the rest waiting in the ruin of their ship for rescue or death. “Is Commander Suram on one of the escape pods?” he asked, already guessing the answer.

“No, sir. The highest-ranking officer on one of the pods is a Lieutenant Rana, who is badly wounded.”

He felt curiously detached as he saw the symbols of the escape pods racing away from Warrior, his mind numb after all of the other losses this day. Escape pods were designed to boost rapidly away from their ship on the assumption that distance would be critical, and in this case that was certainly true. “How much longer until the escape pods are outside the estimated danger zone for Warrior’s power-core blast radius? ”

“Five minutes, sir. That’s the estimate based on the known state of Warrior’s power core and the readings we’re picking up on it.”

Seven minutes later, with the destroyers of the Twentieth Squadron still sixteen minutes away, Geary watched the image of Warrior blossom into an irregular sphere of light and debris. He confirmed that the escape pods were far enough outside the blast area to be able to ride out the shock wave, then closed his eyes, took a long, slow breath, and called Gavelock. “Lieutenant Commander Pastak, please alter your mission to recovery of the escape pods from Warrior. They were close enough to the core overload that many probably received some damage. Thank you, thank all of your ships, for your efforts.”

Pastak’s somber acknowledgment came a few minutes later, then Geary leaned back and closed his eyes again. “Sir?” Desjani whispered. He shook his head, denying any conversation. After a moment, her hand closed over his wrist and squeezed tightly for a second in wordless comfort before being withdrawn. She knew how he felt, and somehow that made it a little easier to bear.

FIVE

GEARY sighed as the tensions of worrying about the upcoming battle were replaced by the pains of dealing with the aftermath of that engagement. He felt incredibly weary, as though he had been on the bridge of Dauntless for most of a week instead of most of a day.

“The Syndic guard force is still about thirty light-minutes from the hypernet gate,” Desjani reported, her own voice tired. “If they keep up their speed, they’ll reach it in about four and a half hours.”

“Fine.” Geary rubbed his eyes, then looked back at his display. That Syndic guard force was now almost two light-hours away from the Alliance fleet. If it had been a lot, lot closer, he might have had to worry about a suicide charge against Dauntless or the auxiliaries, but at this distance the Syndics would take almost a day to get here after they started such a charge. “I guess we can decide what to do about them later.”

There didn’t seem to be much to worry about for the moment. The guard force was clearly going to stick close to the hypernet gate, just as it had last time the Alliance fleet was here, and that gate lay about two and a half light-hours off to port of the Alliance fleet. The habitable world that Lakota boasted was orbiting on the opposite side of its star from the Alliance fleet, almost two and a quarter light-hours to starboard. The Syndic military assets there wouldn’t be any threat unless the Alliance fleet came close to that world, and Geary had no intention of doing that.

Otherwise, the Syndic presence here seemed rapidly to be going to ground as the light from the latest engagement reached different parts of Lakota Star System. Merchant ships were fleeing for whatever sanctuary they could find, and colonies and mining operations on outer planets were shutting down equipment as they sent their populace to whatever shelters existed. Accustomed to having Alliance forces bombard Syndic worlds, the people in the system expected the worst from the victorious fleet. It wasn’t going to happen, but Geary didn’t feel like explaining that to them at the moment.