He leaned back, looked toward Desjani, and shrugged. “If that doesn’t get through to him…”
“A hell-lance will,” Desjani finished.
“Yeah. If it comes to that.” Geary frowned at the display. “Still no movement by the corvettes as of ten minutes ago. Interesting. They’re just maintaining the same positions in orbit relative to the Syndic base.”
“Perhaps they’re planning to use them as part of the perimeter defense of the base.”
“That’d be awfully dumb, tying down ships into static defensive positions, even if we didn’t outnumber them so hugely.” He studied the picture. “I think there’s another reason, but—”
“Syndic cruiser detected orbiting the fourth planet!” the recon watch announced.
“Just one?” Geary watched the report scroll in. He didn’t recognize the class of the light cruiser, but the system declared it to be an obsolete design. “Are these specs right?”
A dozen people on the bridge hurriedly checked. Desjani answered for them all. “Yes, sir.”
“Wow. Look at the propulsion system on that thing! Why’d they stick so much propulsion capability on a light cruiser?”
Desjani frowned, studying the data. “We don’t know. The design hasn’t been encountered and is known only through intelligence sources. Apparently, only a few of those were built, and if they saw battle, the records didn’t get back to us.”
Geary nodded absently, thinking that the only reason the records wouldn’t have gotten back was if the Alliance force involved had been cut to ribbons. The light cruiser wasn’t heavily armed, though. It just had that honking big propulsion system. Hopefully I won’t have to worry what the idea was behind that. If the Syndic commander surrenders, I can ask someone. Otherwise, that cruiser will be a lot of junk floating in close formation after we blow a million holes in it. “The cruiser and the corvettes are still hanging around the planet. That’s a hopeful sign.”
“It’ll make them easier targets, anyway.”
Another hour had almost gone by when the Syndic commander’s response was received. “I am in receipt of your last communication,” the executive in the worn uniform stated precisely. “Standing Syndicate Fleet Fighting Instructions, Article Seven prohibits surrender. Article Nine requires all military installations to be defended in the most vigorous possible manner. Article Twelve states there are no situational exceptions to Articles Seven and Nine. Therefore I must again deny your request.”
Geary stared at the image for a long moment. “How can he be that stupid?”
Co-President Rione answered. “He’s a bureaucrat, Captain Geary. Look at him. Listen to him. He lives to enforce rules regardless of whether or not those rules make sense.” From her tone, Rione had met more than her share of such people already.
Geary almost laughed at the absurdity of it. A bureaucrat. Some guy who’s probably spent his entire career making sure every letter of instruction laid down decades ago and light-years away are followed down to the last subclause. The sort who thinks following every petty rule matters more than anything else. Who else would end up in command of a system where the war was never supposed to come? Who else would want to hold that command for year after empty year?
Then the reality of what the bureaucrat’s petrified insistence on following Syndic Fleet Fighting Instructions, Articles Seven, Nine, and Twelve would cause came back to Geary. He’d have to kill enough of the people serving under this bean counter to force a surrender. Damn him.
Geary punched his communication controls viciously. “To the Syndicate Commander in Corvus System. Surrender is your only option. If you force us to destroy your defenses, I assure you that I will make every effort to ensure that you personally share the fate of your front-line personnel.” He broke the connection, then turned to Captain Desjani. “Have your communications people try to ram some messages directly through to the corvettes and the cruiser telling them we’ll accept their surrender.” Desjani let disapproval show for a moment, but she nodded and gave the orders. Give it a rest, Tanya Desjani. There’s no glory in smashing people facing impossible odds.
Still three hours until the fleet got close enough to the base to engage its defenses. Desjani’s eyes strayed to the section of the display showing the battle cruisers gathered around the jump point, and it wasn’t hard for Geary to read her thoughts. Duellos’s and Tulev’s ships would get to draw blood, but Dauntless would apparently have to be content with accepting the surrender of a few outdated ships. Desjani wasn’t happy about that.
The ships of the Alliance fleet fell deeper into the Corvus System, while the individual ships crawled with widely varying speed and precision to the positions they were supposed to occupy relative to the flagship, the time-late images of the Syndic corvettes dithered around near their base, the Syndic light cruiser apparently continued to orbit the fourth world, and Geary watched it all with growing irritation. He started out trying to note every Alliance ship that was laggard about moving into the new formation, but it wasn’t too long before he’d had to switch to spotting those ships that were assuming their positions with relative speed. There were simply too many laggards to keep individual track of, and distressingly few good performers.
The leading units of the Alliance fleet were supposed to be assuming a formation resembling a huge rectangle, with the flat face toward the enemy. The main body was supposed to be in another even-larger rectangle behind that, then the support ships and their escorts were supposed to be arrayed in a cube farther back yet. Two smaller cubes off to either side were to hold screening forces ready to screen against actions by enemy forces in those areas.
Instead, the intertangled swarm of Alliance ships looked to Geary for all the world like a single distorted wedge, with the fat end toward the enemy.
An alert pulsed, and symbols sprang to life on the display. Geary held his breath as Dauntless picked up Syndic ships exiting the jump point. Modern ones, moving fast. Geary felt adrenaline surge even though he knew he was watching events that had taken place ten minutes ago. And whatever defense his battle cruisers had carried out had also played out ten minutes ago.
Geary barely had time to register the presence of a squadron of Syndic Hunter-Killers formed up around a single heavy cruiser before he watched short-range concentrated fire from Duellos’ and Tulev’s battle cruisers ripping the HuKs to shreds. Moments later, the Alliance attacks swamped the cruiser’s defenses and riddled it before it could get off more than a few shots that were absorbed harmlessly by the battle cruisers’ screens. On the heels of the visual sighting of the battle, reports from the battle cruisers began arriving, confirming what Geary had already seen.
Geary waited, but nothing else came through after the reports of the first ships. They’d been an expendable force, sent through on the off-chance that the Alliance fleet had continued fleeing in panic and hadn’t tried to defend the jump exit.
Expendable. Geary had always thought that was an ugly word and an uglier concept. Apparently, the Syndics didn’t share that feeling.