Brilliant, Opportune, and Inspire hit the Syndic battleships next, weakening the enemy shields a little more, Opportune taking several nasty hits in the process.
Tulev’s four battle cruisers concentrated their fire on the Syndic battleship closest to them as they shot past just to port of the enemy, managing to cause some spot failures of the battleship’s shields but taking a few hits to Dragon.
Desjani brought her battle cruisers in while Geary hoped she wouldn’t push her firing pass in too close to the still- extremely dangerous Syndic battleships. The Syndics tried to concentrate their fire on already-damaged Daring, but Desjani had arranged the intercept so that Daring was farthest from the enemy, helping Daring to avoid the damage that Formidable had suffered. Dauntless and Victorious slammed shots at the Syndic battleship that still had the strongest shields, weakening the enemy’s protection further while managing to avoid taking more damage themselves.
That left Illustrious and Incredible to hammer the first Syndic battleship again. As the last two Alliance battle cruisers finished their firing passes, the enemy battleships kept onward, their shields seriously weakened but their armor and all weapons and other systems intact, still headed on a curving intercept course aimed at the Alliance auxiliaries.
But bearing down on the Syndic battleships were the Alliance battleships of the Second, Fifth, and Eighth Divisions. Twelve to two would have been awful odds under any circumstances, but the Alliance battleships also had shields at full strength while the Syndics’ shields were slowly recovering.
Geary grinned as he saw that the three Alliance subformations had stuck to the maneuvering plan that coordinated their movements. Gallant, Indomitable, Glorious, and Magnificent slashed by just above the Syndic battleships, followed milliseconds later by Relentless, Reprisal, Superb, and Splendid making a firing pass just beneath the Syndics, a few seconds after that Fearless, Resolution, Redoubtable, and Warspite pounding them from the starboard side. That much firepower hitting that quickly left the beleaguered Syndics without a chance. The Syndics fired back, scoring a couple of hits on Glorious and Fearless, but as the twelve Alliance battleships pulled away, they left behind them an expanding ball of debris that marked the destruction of one Syndic battleship and a tumbling mass of wreckage that had once been the second enemy battleship. A few escape pods spat from the ruin of the second battleship as it tumbled silently off to one side of its original vector.
By the time Captain Armus’s Tenth Battleship Division reached engagement range thirty seconds later, all his four battleships could do was tear the remains of the second Syndic battleship into a lot of smaller pieces of wreckage.
Geary sighed with relief, then broadcast commands again. “All Alliance ships with the exception of the Auxiliaries formation are to assume station on flagship Dauntless as indicated.” On his display, the intended formation looked like a ragged ball extending outward in front of and slightly above the Syndic Casualty Flotilla, the subformations built around Alliance battle cruisers and battleships arranged roughly in a sphere. It wasn’t pretty, but it would do.
Desjani gave him a questioning look, knowing that Geary favored neat formations. “Saving fuel cells?”
“That’s part of it. This keeps maneuvering by our ships to a minimum. I was also thinking that if the fleet looks a little sloppy when the Syndic pursuit force arrives, they might think the Alliance fleet is still on the verge of falling apart like it appeared when we left Lakota the first time.”
“Will they believe that after seeing what we’ve already done to the Syndics in this star system?” she asked doubtfully.
“The odds were good enough that even a disorganized force could have mangled the Syndics here. Maybe it won’t fool the Syndics, but there’s no sense in wasting fuel cells right now. Once the pursuit force shows up, we’ll get moving fast and get everything neatened up then.”
All the Alliance warships had pivoted to use their main propulsion units to slow down so they wouldn’t get too far from the critically important Alliance auxiliaries, assuming their positions in the formation that Geary had mentally labeled the Big Ugly Ball. With that situation well in hand, the Syndic pursuit force still not having arrived, and the nearest operational Syndic combatants almost a light-hour distant and hauling ass away from the Alliance fleet, Geary gave in to temptation again and pulled up a view from one of the Marine officers retaking the Audacious.
The shuttles had mated not only with the remains of Audacious ’s external air locks and shuttle dock but also with a few spots where big holes had been blown in the battleship’s armor. Marine detachments had swarmed into the silent ship, ready for anything. Now, Geary’s view from the combat armor of the Marine he’d chosen showed the battleship’s interior rendered strange by tremendous amounts of internal damage and a lack of regular lighting. The Marine lieutenant and his squad reached an internal air lock that had been repaired just enough to function and passed through into areas where temporary patches had been slapped on holes in bulkheads to seal in atmosphere.
The Alliance Marines moved swiftly, their battle-armor sensors scanning for booby traps, their weapons seeking targets as they came around corners and pulled themselves down passageways cluttered with wreckage. No enemies revealed themselves, and no traps materialized, which instead of being reassuring just made everyone more nervous. Another hatch loomed, this one locked. The Marines paused, most on guard, weapons ready, while one of their number applied a mini charge and blew the lock apart. “No stun grenades!” someone barked over the Marine command circuit.
“But, Sarge, there might be-”
“There might be Alliance prisoners of war on the other side of that hatch, and we don’t know how bad off our own people on this hulk might be. Even a stun charge might kill ’em. Aimed shots only, and nobody fire unless you have positive ID on enemy targets. I’ll personally shoot any bitch or son of a bitch who puts a round into an Alliance prisoner of war. Understand?” A chorus of assents sounded.
One Marine grabbed the hatch and tugged it open as his comrades’ weapons leveled to aim into the large compartment beyond.
For a moment Geary feared that the compartment was stuffed full of dead Alliance personnel, but then he saw resigned, rebellious, and frightened expressions on the faces turning to the hatch, each emotion changing to disbelief as the former prisoners recognized Alliance Marine combat armor. “The air in there sucks,” the Marine lieutenant reported to his superior. "CO2 is way too high.”
“Get them out as fast as you can,” the order came back. “Third Platoon is rigging an evac tube from the last working air lock to the shuttles. Get them moving!”