Captain Tyrosian’s eyes, which sometimes seemed to glaze over when faced with operational matters, lit with enthusiasm. “Weaponize the abandoned Syndic ships? Proximity fuses? Do you want them linked and timed to create a mass detonation?”
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
“Consider it done, sir,” Tyrosian announced confidently. “When does it need to be in place?”
“About two hours.”
The engineer jerked visibly at that, then nodded. “They’ll be ready, sir.”
As the image of Tyrosian vanished, Geary glanced over at Rione. “Thanks for the idea.”
Rione raised both eyebrows. “Your idea seems to have considerably outstripped my modest proposal.”
“We wouldn’t have thought of it without your suggestion,” Geary noted.
Desjani looked toward Rione and inclined her head slightly in silent agreement. Rione smiled stiffly back at her.
Pretending he hadn’t noticed the byplay, Geary studied his star-system display, rubbing his chin with one hand. “The problem will be getting the Syndics to enter the danger area when it counts. We’ll have to fool them without their knowing they’re being led that way. It won’t be easy.”
“I’m sure you can manage it,” Rione remarked.
“We already have decoys in place to lure them toward the Casualty Flotilla,” Desjani pointed out.
He frowned at the display, knowing that she meant the auxiliaries. Without its auxiliaries, the Alliance fleet would be doomed, certain to run out of fuel cells as well as expendable munitions long before it could reach Alliance space again. It made them critically important to protect, and the best possible lures for an enemy attack. “We already did that once at Sancere. Will they be fooled again?”
“We just have to do it differently,” Desjani argued.
“Got any ideas?” Geary asked.
As it turned out, she did. Not ideas that he completely liked, but enough to toss back and forth as they came up with a plan. Every once in a while he glanced at Rione to see if she had anything to add, but Rione was just gazing stony-faced at her own display.
“Captain Tyrosian, get any shuttles and personnel not engaged in looting Syndic repair ships or rigging up the hulks to explode to work doing highly visible plundering of materials off other Syndic shipping in the Casualty Flotilla.”
The engineer, doubtless ready to announce proudly the progress of the pillaging so far, froze in midword and looked confused. “Sir?”
“I want the Syndics to see us desperately grabbing everything we can,” Geary repeated. “Food and anything else. They need to think that you need to stay with the Casualty Flotilla as long as possible to grab as much as you can. We need to look desperate for supplies, Captain Tyrosian.”
“We … are desperate for supplies, sir,” Tyrosian protested.
Desjani barely avoided laughing, instead making a choking sound to one side that Geary ignored. “Captain Tyrosian,” he explained patiently, “we’re going to keep your auxiliaries with the Casualty Flotilla long past the point of safety once the Syndic Pursuit Flotilla shows up. They’re going to be focused on you anyway, since your four auxiliaries are the most critical parts of our fleet. The Syndics need a plausible reason for your ships staying with the Casualty Flotilla while the Syndics come right for you. If they think you need to keep grabbing stuff off the Syndic hulks, it will provide that reason.”
Tyrosian took a moment to reply. “We’re bait again?”
“Yes, Captain, you’re bait again.”
The engineering officer looked depressed, but nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Needless to say,” Geary felt compelled to add, “we’ll do everything we can to keep your ships from actually being destroyed.”
“Thank you, sir. We appreciate that.”
“I will provide detailed maneuvering instructions for your ships once the Syndic pursuit force arrives and we know their movement vectors. Thank you, Captain Tyrosian.”
Twenty minutes later, with a few more Alliance shuttles out among the Syndic hulks and survival-suited sailors making a show of tossing looted supplies from Syndic ships into the open cargo bays of the shuttles, the alarms that Geary had been dreading finally sounded.
“The Syndic pursuit force has arrived at the jump point from Ixion,” the operations watch-stander announced.
Geary held his breath as the Alliance fleet’s sensors evaluated the enemy force appearing at the jump point, which was now fifteen light-minutes away, meaning the Syndics had already had fifteen minutes to decide what to do and to start doing it before the Alliance fleet had even seen their arrival in this star system.
The number of HuKs and light cruisers in the pursuit force was still impressive despite all of the losses that the Alliance fleet had managed to inflict. The ranks of the Syndic heavy cruisers, on the other hand, had been decimated during the engagements at Lakota the last time the Alliance fleet was here, with many destroyed and twenty-two heavy cruisers among the badly damaged ships that had remained in the star system. Nine of those twenty-two had already been destroyed, and the remainder were abandoned and part of the Casualty Flotilla. Only sixteen heavy cruisers remained with the Syndic pursuit force.
The Syndic capital warships flashed into existence, their numbers multiplying. Ten battleships. Fifteen. Thirty-one. Six battle cruisers. Thirteen battle cruisers.
“Thirty-one battleships and thirteen battle cruisers,” Desjani murmured. “Not too bad.”
“They’re in better shape than ours are,” Geary noted. He checked the numbers he already knew by heart. The Alliance fleet still had twenty-two battleships, the two scout battleships, and seventeen battle cruisers. Plus twenty-nine heavy cruisers. But a number of those Alliance warships had significant battle damage, and even though the Alliance ships had been resupplied with some new expendable munitions, the Syndics probably had much better inventories of missiles and grapeshot on hand.
Thirty-one enemy battleships. Geary took a moment to relax himself, knowing he had to respect that much combat capability and yet not get unnerved by it. “Our only advantage is in the number of heavy cruisers,” he said out loud.
Desjani shook her head, “We’ve got another very big advantage,” she corrected. “That Syndic commander last saw us running for safety and has had eleven days to fix that image in their mind. Now that commander is going to see how much damage we’ve done to the Syndic warships left behind here, which is going to create a lot of anger. Overconfidence and anger add up to recklessness, sir.”
“I can’t disagree with your math,” Geary said. He couldn’t help thinking that overconfidence on his part and his own anger at the more recalcitrant among his ship captains might have led him to make a reckless decision to come to Lakota the first time. That scarcely mattered now, though. What counted would be taking advantage of an enemy commander’s own probable state of mind. “Let’s see if he does what we expect.”
As the minutes went past, it became increasingly obvious that the Syndic commander, whether reckless or not, was doing as they hoped. The Syndic formation altered slightly as it accelerated toward an intercept with the Alliance ships, the standard Syndic box formation adjusting into a deep rectangular shape with one broad side facing the Alliance fleet. The box was a decent multipurpose formation whose length, width, and depth could be adjusted for different tactical situations, but it had its limitations in terms of bringing firepower to bear on any point in any enemy formation and in adjusting its facing quickly. It seemed to be the only formation the Syndic commanders had been trained (or allowed) to use, though.