“We had five battle cruisers,” Ensign Hochin was saying. “I know we lost Avenger. Six battleships. As far as I know only Peerless was destroyed.”
“Oh, damn,” Desjani cursed. “I should have realized. The closest escape pods to us are from the Alliance ships destroyed earliest. The sensors on the pods are rudimentary, so they won’t have much idea of what happened after their ships were lost. To get a decent picture of how many Alliance ships made it back to the jump exit, we’ll have to wait until we hear from the escape pods off Intractable.”
“Another hour?” Geary guessed.
“At least.”
But Hochin was still talking. “I expect you’ll plan on wiping out the Syndics left here, but some pods off Mantle passed on word to us that one of the Syndic heavy cruisers picked up some of our personnel in escape pods from Peerless. They think it was between forty and sixty of our people, but it could have been less.”
“Damn.” Geary checked the positions of the Syndic heavy cruisers on the display. “Which one?”
“As best we can determine from the location of Mantle’s escape pods and their description of the course of the Syndic cruiser,” Hochin continued as if he had not heard Geary, “it should be located in an area about one and a half light-hours from the star Atalia, slightly above the plane of the system, pretty close to a line between the jump point from Kalixa and the star. Mantle’s people said the Syndic cruiser had heavy damage forward.”
“This one!” the combat-systems watch cried out triumphantly. “We had to work his course back, but it has to be this one.”
“Is it damaged forward?” Desjani asked.
“Yes, Captain. A lot.”
“Excellent.” Desjani nodded to Geary. “That’s one ensign who deserves a field promotion to lieutenant.”
“Remind me about that.” The heavy cruiser in question had been badly torn up forward, but apparently retained most of its propulsion capabilities. Since seeing the Alliance fleet, it had accelerated to point zero six light speed. “Can we intercept him?”
“Not the Illustrious formation, sir,” the operations watch reported with considerably less happiness.
“After slowing to pick up these other pods, they won’t be able to accelerate fast enough to catch that cruiser.”
“What about us?” Geary asked.
The operations watch ran courses and speeds, then made a dissatisfied gesture. “The Eighth Light Cruiser Squadron on the edge of our formation farthest to starboard could manage an intercept with the least accelerating and braking, sir. The Twenty-third Destroyer Squadron could accompany them.”
Geary checked the weapons on those ships against what the Syndic heavy cruiser was assessed to have left. “That should be enough firepower, but this isn’t just about taking out that cruiser. We need to get the POWs off, and light cruisers and destroyers don’t carry Marines.”
“Ask them to surrender,” Rione urged.
“That hasn’t been a wildly successful option in the past, Madam Co-President.”
“Maybe this time will be different. What does it cost you to demand their surrender? Or at least the surrender of the Alliance personnel that they have captured?”
“Not a lot,” Geary admitted.
“You could make a deal,” Rione suggested. “Offer to trade them the continued existence of that heavy cruiser for releasing our people.”
Geary could feel the attitudes of the fleet personnel around him stiffening at the suggestion. Only Desjani spoke, though, and that as if to herself rather than addressing Rione. “Standing orders require all feasible efforts to destroy the enemy and prohibit allowing Syndic forces to escape as long as they retain any combat capability.”
As fleet commander, he could override those standing orders, but in this case that didn’t seem like the right thing to do. What else did he have to bargain with, though?
Rione looked around in frustration. “Make a deal, Captain Geary! If you won’t agree to them keeping their ship, then you still have the lives of Syndic crew in your hands!”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Syndic commanders haven’t proven to care very much about the lives of their crews.”
“Some of them have! You’ve made comments about them, about how the crews abandoned ship too early. Why did their commanders do that if they didn’t care about their crews?”
That was a point. Those cases could have represented panic, but they also could have been the result of captains’ concern for the fate of their personnel. “And maybe if that Syndic captain isn’t that worried about the crew, they’ll be worried about their own life. It’s worth a try.” He recorded a demand and sent it off, sent orders to the Eighth Light Cruiser and Twenty-third Destroyer Squadrons to accelerate a bit more and alter course to intercept the Syndic heavy cruiser, then settled back again to wait with growing restlessness.
“Captain?” the combat-systems watch reported. “There is something odd about the damage to that Syndic heavy cruiser, the one who picked up some of the escape pods from Peerless.”
Desjani glanced back at the watch-stander. “Define ‘odd.’ ”
“We focused sensors on it, and analysis of the damage indicates it was caused not by multiple impacts but by a single massive blow.”
“One hit?” Desjani frowned in thought. “What could have done that?”
“Unknown, Captain. No single weapon in the Alliance inventory could inflict that kind of hit.”
Desjani frowned deeper. “What about a collision?”
The watch-stander ran some figures. “In theory, Captain, that’s possible, but the odds of a head-on collision being strong enough to inflict that much damage and not a lot more are very, very small. Whatever hit that cruiser hit it right on the bow, and not a lot tends to survive head-on strikes. It seems to have hit the entire bow, too, so it wasn’t something small.”
“Hmmm. That’s very strange. But in the absence of any evidence of another cause, we’ll have to assume a collision is what did it. Let me know if any other details show up to explain the damage.” Desjani looked back at Geary as if aware of something he hadn’t said out loud. “Sir?”
“Why’d they jump to Varandal?” he asked her.
“The Syndic reserve flotilla? To destroy what was left of the Alliance force that attacked here.”
“But their orders must have been to stop us before we reached Varandal. Syndics don’t improvise on their orders.” Geary glared at the display as if an answer was hidden there. “Why didn’t they stay here to hit us when we arrived?”
Desjani frowned. “They must have been ordered to go to Varandal. The Alliance warships that came here ran into the reserve flotilla on its way to the jump point for Varandal.” She tapped some commands and studied the results. “That matches the debris trail. The reserve flotilla wasn’t going to wait here for us. They must have planned on jumping before we got here, reducing Varandal’s defenses, then hitting us when we arrived home with our guard down and our fuel and weapons at the lowest possible state.”
That made sense, though something about the situation still bothered him. “It would have been easier to do all of that here at Atalia.” No one else offered suggestions, so Geary leaned back and thought, his ideas going nowhere this time.
He hadn’t realized how much time had passed until the communications watch called him. “Captain Geary, sir. The commanding officer of that Syndic heavy cruiser is offering to surrender her prisoners in exchange for your agreement not to attack the escape pods from her ship.”