Lights sparkled as the Syndic cruiser ran tail-on into the barrage of grapeshot, each ball bearing impacting the cruiser’s shields and vaporizing in a flash. The cumulative impacts slowed the cruiser as if it were plowing through a close-set succession of brick walls, even as they seriously weakened its rear-facing shields. Geary watched the display, his jaw tight, thinking about how that extra deceleration was probably overwhelming the ability of the cruiser’s inertial dampers to compensate, and what effect that’d be having on her crew. But there were too many lives in the Alliance fleet riding on stopping the Syndic cruiser. I can’t let the fate of the cruiser’s crew affect my decisions. And, damn, but that was a nicely done intercept. “Very nice job, Captain Desjani.”
Her face actually flushed with pleasure at the praise, but Desjani kept her voice dispassionate. “He’s not dead yet.”
A moment later the cruiser raced into contact with the null-field. Weakened by the successive impacts of the grapeshot volleys, the shields flared and failed as the weapon dug a swath along one side of the fast-moving ship like a knife slashing through butter. The Syndic light cruiser reeled from its course as the charge tore a trench through a long section of the hull and partway inside. Through the glow of the gas cloud, which had been solid parts of the cruiser moments before, Geary watched with a sort of sick fascination as the crippled Syndic warship shot past above the Dauntless. In that brief moment, Geary thought he could see secondary explosions and escaping atmosphere as compartments once safely inside the cruiser were now suddenly open to space.
He was wondering if the Dauntless would need to catch up to the Syndic cruiser in order to finish it off when the specters fired earlier came angling in from either side, their target now slowed appreciably. Somehow, a defensive system on the cruiser was still working and managed a lucky hit that made one specter flare and disappear. The specter’s companion missile went into a series of evasive maneuvers, but even as it did so the two specters on the other side looped straight into the cruiser’s beam.
Twin explosions blossomed two-thirds of the way down the cruiser’s hull, and the ship broke apart. Moments later, the smaller aft portion erupted into a larger explosion as the power core blew it into nothingness.
The forward part of the cruiser, crippled and torn, spun off, then took another blow as the last remaining specter rammed into it and blew a huge chunk away.
Geary became aware that the bridge of the Dauntless was echoing with cheers. He took a deep breath, watching the remains of the Syndic cruiser tumble off into space, then tore his gaze away and saw Captain Desjani watching him, her mouth stretched in a broad, triumphant grin.
“Why aren’t you cheering, Captain Geary?” she asked.
Geary closed his eyes. “I never feel like cheering when brave people die, Captain Desjani. Those Syndics had to be stopped, but they fought well.”
She shrugged, still smiling. “They’d be cheering if the shoe was on the other foot.”
“Maybe. But I don’t model myself on the Syndics.” He nodded toward his display, not looking at her. “You did an outstanding job on that intercept, Captain Desjani. There’re no more Syndic combatants active. I’d like your recommendation on the possibility of getting boats over to the wreck.”
“It’d be hard to intercept, and after what we did to it there’s unlikely to be anything left salvaging.”
“There might be survivors, Captain Desjani.”
She remained silent for a moment. “I’ll see what can be done.”
He heard disagreement in her voice again but didn’t really care.
FIVE
Colonel Carabali’s image saluted Geary. “My Marines are prepared to secure the Syndic base, Captain Geary.”
Geary looked down at the frozen world, less than a light-minute away from Dauntless now. “Make sure your Marines know that we want as little broken as possible when that base is taken. After we’ve salvaged whatever we can use from the base, we’ll destroy anything left with military potential, but I want to make sure we don’t put holes through anything we’re going to want for ourselves.”
“They’ve been briefed to avoid collateral damage to the maximum extent possible, Captain Geary.”
Geary started to ask if that meant they’d actually follow those orders scrupulously, then stopped himself. Unless things had changed a lot more than he could imagine, you just didn’t ask whether or not Marines would follow orders. You assumed that they did, and that was all there was to it. “Very well. Get your landing parties on the way. Arrogant, Exemplar, and Braveheart have taken out the anti-space defenses near the base and will maintain positions overhead in case you need their firepower.”
“Thank you, Captain Geary. My Marines will have that base for you in short order. Intact,” Colonel Carabali added with a brief twist of her lips that might’ve been a smile.
Geary leaned back, rubbing his forehead and wondering why things seemed to alternate between happening too slow and too fast with no real transition between the two states. He looked back at the display, where the ships of his fleet not involved in capturing the Syndic base had braked themselves down to .05 light. No longer facing any enemy combatants to lure them away, they were finally forming into a semblance of order. Titan and the other fleet auxiliaries had escorts again and were veering slightly above the rest of the fleet to take a direct path to the jump point they’d use to exit Corvus System several days from now.
He frowned as his eyes rested on the battle cruisers still hastening to rejoin the rest of the fleet. How much time do I have in this system? How long would it have taken the Syndics to reorganize their fleet, to decide how much to send through the jump point after us, and to actually get into jump space? I’ve gone over this a thousand times, and it always comes down to just not having any way to know. But aside from those mines I had Duellos leave at the jump point, I don’t dare leave anything else there on guard.
Geary studied the remaining Syndic activity in Corvus System. He could tell where the light waves showing his fleet’s arrival could be seen by watching a sphere expand at scale light speed across the depiction of the system. It was odd to think that the arrival of the fleet, and the hourslater destruction of the three Syndic ships, wouldn’t even be known by the inhabited world for some time. War had come to Corvus, but most of the inhabitants of the system would remain blissfully unaware of that for a few hours yet.
He hadn’t heard from the Syndic commander again. Either the man was pouring over the Syndic Fleet Fighting Instructions for what to do next, or he’d died in the preliminary bombardment of the base. Thinking of the lost crews on the two Syndic ships that had fought to the death to no purpose, Geary couldn’t help hoping for the latter.
He fiddled with his controls, finally finding one that provided reports on the Syndic base nearby. Some of the images seemed to confirm that the base had indeed been maintaining stockpiles of supplies on hand for any passing ships that needed them. It’d been a safe assumption that the supplies would still be there even if the base had been abandoned, since shipping out the matériel would’ve cost more than they were worth, and keeping those supplies deep-frozen and unaffected by weather was rarely a problem on worlds that were usually far enough from their stars to lack meaningful atmosphere. The stockpiles are supposed to be for Syndic warships, of course, but I’ve no intention of being picky at this point. I hope Syndic fleet food is better than what the Alliance serves, but I doubt it.