“No systems detected still active on Renown,” a watch-stander reported in a calm but trembling voice. “Renown’s emergency beacon has lit off. Her surviving crew is abandoning ship.”
Geary had been there, too. Hoping a functioning escape pod still existed, racing through once-familiar passageways of his ship grown foreign from massive damage, the enemy weapons still tearing into his mortally wounded ship.
“Core overload set on Renown. Contact lost with Renown.”
On the display, the battered hulk, which minutes before had been an Alliance battle cruiser, rolled silently away, her power core set to explode to deny her carcass to the enemy, the escape pods holding her crew mingling with those from the already destroyed Syndic warships.
Too late to save Renown, Paladin came tearing past and above the shattered battle cruiser. Hell lances tore out from the battleship in volleys that ripped into Syndic HuKs scrambling to escape. Two HuKs exploded under the impacts, and one more disintegrated under the blows of Paladin’s hell lances. Then the lone Alliance battleship was in among the Syndic light cruisers, its powerful hell-lance batteries shattering the shields on two of the light cruisers, destroying one and crippling the other.
A second later Paladin, her shields glowing now under an almost constant barrage of enemy fire, encountered Syndic heavy cruisers. Paladin’s own weapons tore open a single Syndic heavy cruiser as the battleship staggered onward directly toward a division of Syndic battleships.
“Captain Midea is crazy, but she’s dying well,” Desjani remarked somberly.
“Did she have to take her ship and crew with her?” Geary whispered in reply. Too late. Too late to relieve Midea. Too late to figure out how to control a reckless officer with a ship’s fate in her hands.
“Paladin’s losing shields,” the watch reported.
Geary could see that on his own display. Paladin’s lonely battle was far enough from the rest of the fleet by now that it took a few seconds for light from the fight to reach Dauntless. A lot could happen in a few seconds.
It took less time than that for Paladin to charge straight into the Syndic battleship division she’d been aiming for, shuddering as enemy weapons ripped into her from all sides. But Paladin concentrated her own fire on a single battleship even as her hell-lance batteries started falling silent under the Syndic barrage. As Paladin and that Syndic battleship flashed past each other, Paladin fired her null field at the weakened bow shields of the enemy ship. Its already-stressed shields failed, and the null field penetrated into the Syndic battleship’s bow, digging a massive crater there.
As the Syndic battleship reeled out of formation, crippled, Paladin shot through the rest of the Syndic formation, taking hit after hit, systems falling dead and pieces of armor and hull being blown off under the impact of Syndic hell lances, grapeshot, and missile fire.
As Geary’s fleet came over the top of its turn and steadied on course for another pass at the Syndic flotilla, Paladin’s remains tumbled onward past the Syndics, the only sign of life on the wreck a few escape pods popping free.
“We’ll avenge them,” Geary stated as the Alliance fleet steadied out to cross over the top of the Syndic formation again. But he’d misjudged slightly this time, maybe rattled by what was happening to Renown and Paladin, and the two groups of warships tore past each other at extreme hell-lance range, neither the Alliance nor the Syndics scoring any significant damage on the other.
“We’ll get the Syndics on the next pass,” Desjani predicted, her face grim.
“Yeah.” Geary took a deep breath, then transmitted his next orders. “All formations, turn up one one zero degrees, port zero one degrees at time five seven.” As the fleet came back around, it would invert again as the two formations wove back and forth toward each other in interlinked S curves. The Syndic commander should recognize that he couldn’t achieve a good firing pass unless he broke the pattern, but the Syndics wouldn’t break contact while they thought they had a chance to inflict damage back on the Alliance. They never had, stubbornly sticking to fights in misplaced displays of bravery and determination. In this fight, the Syndics had already been hurt a lot more than the Alliance, even after counting Renown and Paladin. By the time the Syndics decided to flee, they’d be too badly hurt for any major warship to get away.
“Sir, activity at the hypernet gate!”
Alerts pulsed on Geary’s display. His eyes went to the area of the Syndic hypernet gate even as a watch-stander began calling out the information in a breathless voice. “Syndic forces have been spotted emerging from the hypernet gate. Twenty Hunter-Killers. Update, twenty-eight Hunter-Killers. Twelve light cruisers. Update, forty-two Hunter-Killers, twenty-six light cruisers, eight heavy cruisers. Update, sixty-nine Hunter-Killers, thirty-one light cruisers, nineteen heavy cruisers.”
Geary watched the enemy symbols multiplying madly at the hypernet gate, trying not to let his dismay show.
“They’ve got a substantial number of escorts,” Desjani remarked with what Geary thought was remarkable calmness.
Which implied a lot of capital ships.
The display and the watch-stander confirmed that moments later. “Sixteen battle cruisers. Update, twenty battle cruisers. Twelve battleships. Update, twenty-three battleships.”
Geary realized he hadn’t been breathing and inhaled. At least the threat symbols had stopped growing in number. He took a long moment to read the final assessment of the new Syndic force. Twenty-three battleships, twenty battle cruisers, nineteen heavy cruisers, thirty-one light cruisers, one hundred twelve Hunter-Killers.
The odds in this star system had just gone from roughly even to very bad. In capital ships alone the Alliance fleet now had only twenty-five surviving battleships and seventeen surviving battle cruisers. The battle so far had taken out three Syndic battleships and four battle cruisers, but even after those losses, total Syndic capital ships at Lakota now added up to forty-four battleships and thirty-four battle cruisers, most of those fresh and presumably with full load-outs of expendable munitions, whereas the Alliance ships had used up most of their missiles and grapeshot already. Almost two-to-one odds, and no matter what anyone else in the Alliance fleet believed, Geary didn’t think that superior fighting spirit could make up for that kind of disparity in firepower.
TEN
“It must be the main Syndic fleet,” Desjani observed, her body tense. “Their primary strike force. The Syndics in this system couldn’t have sent for reinforcements and had them show up this quickly, so they must have been headed here for some other reason.”
“Lucky us,” Geary muttered. The hypernet gate was almost five light-hours away now, so that Syndic flotilla they were just now seeing had arrived five hours ago. But the Syndics in that new strike force had seen the Alliance fleet the moment they arrived, and had already had five hours to size up the situation and make plans. “We need to wipe out this flotilla we’re engaged with. Then we can—”
“Syndic ships are turning away,” a watch-stander called in a disappointed voice.
“Son of a bitch.” There wasn’t any doubt. Instead of curving back in for another firing pass, the Syndics they’d been fighting were continuing outward, accelerating past point one light to open the distance from the Alliance fleet even faster. Instead of closing on the Alliance fleet, the Syndics were now heading in another direction. “They’re breaking contact.”