Increasingly restless, Geary finally stood up. “I’m going to walk around the ship.” The crew undoubtedly thought his walks were a sign of his interest in them, and they certainly were that, but at times like this, the walks were also a way to work out nervousness and kill time during the long, slow approach to combat.
The crew members he met all seemed tired from the long days at increased alert while in Sancere Star System, but cheerful and confident. The hopeful and certain expressions they turned on Geary still had a tendency to unnerve him, since he knew how fallible he really was, but at least he also knew he hadn’t let them down yet. As he walked around, Geary noticed crew members looking past him as if expecting to see someone with him, and realized they were looking for Co-President Rione, even though none of them mentioned her. That was a little unnerving, too.
At some point, he went past the worship area and walked into the area set aside for ancestors, entering one of the small rooms and lighting a candle before saying a brief prayer. The living stars knew he needed all of the help he could get. But tempting as it was to linger and speak for a while to the one audience he felt sure of, his dead ancestors, Geary knew he couldn’t hide in here while the fleet headed for battle.
All of that didn’t kill nearly enough time. Geary confirmed that nothing had changed in the situation, everybody rushing toward their respective intercept points and the Syndics still closing in on the path to the mines, then forced himself to go by the meal areas and pretend to eat. Most of what they had now was Syndic rations looted from places like Kaliban and now Sancere. The best thing about the Syndic food, Geary and the sailors he spoke with agreed, was that it made the usual fleet food seem good by comparison. “If we offered the Syndics decent meals, they’d probably surrender in droves,” one of the sailors suggested as she choked down something that was apparently supposed to be hash, though made up of unidentifiable meat and some very odd looking potatoes with the texture and taste of blocks of cardboard.
Geary returned to the bridge. Rione wasn’t there, and Desjani was asleep in her chair again. A captain who spent that much time on the bridge could drive her crew insane, but Desjani wasn’t a screamer or a micromanager, so her presence didn’t wear on her watch-standers. She woke up as Geary entered and nodded to him. “One more hour until the Syndics reach the first mines. They’re still heading right down the chute.”
“When do you think they’ll start braking?” Geary asked.
“In about half an hour. That’ll leave them a very slight margin for error.” Desjani indicated the projected track on the display. “If they brake too early, they’ll slide off the path to the mines, but we’ll have a much better shot at catching them with this formation. But if they want to hit Formation Gamma, they’ll have to start braking at this point.”
Geary settled in, relaxing as best he could. To kill time, he began rechecking the supplies the fleet had picked up here at Sancere, and how the auxiliaries were doing on manufacturing replacement items. There had been a lot of maneuvering here in Sancere, burning through fuel cells, so Geary tossed off a quick message to Captain Tyrosian on Witch to make sure new fuel cells were a priority. All of the grapeshot, mines, and missiles in the world wouldn’t provide enough help to ships that couldn’t maneuver.
Co-President Rione returned, surveying the bridge of the Dauntless, Captain Desjani, and Captain Geary with her usual unruffled and challenging attitude. Nodding in greeting, Geary realized there was little chance of him ever accidentally calling her Victoria while on the bridge. The Co-President Rione who occupied the observer’s seat on the bridge might look like the Victoria who shared Geary’s bed, but her attitude was so different that she seemed to really be another person, one who retained distance and distrust toward Captain Geary. I did ask her to stay challenging, after all. But I have a feeling she’d be like this whether I’d asked it of her or not.
Desjani also nodded in almost-friendly greeting. Being involved with Geary had clearly made Rione more trustworthy in Desjani’s eyes, though he suspected Rione would react pretty negatively to the idea. He certainly wasn’t going to mention it to her. But then she probably already had realized that, which might be contributing to the frosty way Rione was treating Geary on the bridge. Maybe he should put off mentioning to Rione that the crew seemed to be expecting to see them together. Or maybe she wanted to be seen with him, to make as public a spectacle as possible of their association.
Geary turned back to the much less complicated situation playing out between the Syndic flotilla and his five formations. His display indicated every Alliance ship had come to full battle readiness. He and thousands of other officers and sailors had nothing to do for a while yet but watch the time scroll down to the moments when the Syndics would encounter the first mines.
The Syndics pivoted up and over in place almost exactly when predicted, bringing their propulsion units to face forward so they could brake the Syndic formation’s velocity down to engagement speed. A few minutes later, Geary saw Formation Gamma increase speed a fraction to move the Syndic track to intercept exactly back onto the path through the mines. Surely the Syndics would get suspicious? But, perhaps because they were fixed on their intended targets, the Syndics adjusted their course just as the Alliance needed them to.
Fifteen more minutes crawled by. “Here they come,” Desjani murmured.
The intricate maneuvers that had set up the trap had sent ships or formations across the space the Syndic flotilla was now braking through. The result hadn’t been so much a minefield as a lattice made up of multiple rows and strings of mines spread across light-seconds of distance along the track. The Syndic warships were now rushing stern first into the area holding those mines. Any hits would fall on their main propulsion units aft, which was exactly where the Alliance wanted those hits to strike.
The Syndic formation braked through the first two lines of mines without encountering any. Frustrating, but the odds didn’t favor a lot of hits. The third line lay right across their path.
A Syndic HuK took a direct hit on the stern. The mine collapsed the rear shields and blew the HuK’s propulsion units, leaving it unable to maneuver. One of the battle cruisers took two hits, losing a single propulsion unit. There was a pause as the Syndics swept onward, until they hit where the fourth and fifth lines crossed. This time several hits sparked on the Syndic ships, sending a heavy cruiser stumbling out of formation and taking out a couple of propulsion units on another battle cruiser.
By this time the Syndics had figured out they were running into something. The most effective counter would be to pivot their ships so they were facing forward and would take any further hits on their bows. But pivoting would mean the warships couldn’t use their main propulsion systems to brake anymore, which would prevent them from slowing enough to intercept Formation Gamma. Geary had guessed that the Syndic leader would chose to continue taking occasional hits rather than give up the chance to strike the Alliance ships in Gamma. If the Syndics had hit all the mines at once and sustained the damage in a single burst, it probably would’ve caused the leader to call off the attack, but instead the hits kept coming in ones and twos, adding up in a way that the Syndic commander might well miss until too late while focus remained on the Alliance warships in Gamma.