Desjani nodded. “You tend to favor hitting upper corners, so he probably chose a lower one to throw off the Syndics.”
“I tend to hit upper corners?” Developing a pattern would be dangerous, since the enemy could exploit knowledge of that to counter his moves.
“Yes. I was going to talk to you about that.”
“Thanks. Next time bring something like that up a little earlier.” The words were light, but inside Geary’s guts were knotted with tension. Whatever Duellos had done had happened an hour ago. He couldn’t do anything to influence the events he was seeing. He knew that. But it didn’t make watching it any easier. Especially when he saw Duellos’s formation start to shred in a way that didn’t seem planned. “What’s that—Adroit. Where is Adroit going?” Kattnig was doing what they had feared, changing course to head directly for the Syndic flotilla instead of following the glancing firing run Duellos had set up.
But within moments, Geary’s outrage changed to disbelief as Adroit’s track became clearer. “What the hell.”
From her baffled tones, Desjani felt the same way. “Adroit is turning away, opening her distance to the Syndic formation.” She turned a shocked expression to Geary. “He’s avoiding action.”
Agonized, Geary watched helplessly as the other four battle cruisers in Adroit’s division made initial moves to follow her track, then wavered onto new vectors as their individual commanding officers tried to compensate for their maneuvers away from an intercept of the Syndics.
In the very little time available to react, some of them overcompensated.
“Damn,” Desjani whispered through clenched teeth, as the Alliance strike force whipped past the Syndic flotilla, Assert and Agile curving on paths that brought them closer to the Syndics than the rest of the Alliance warships.
Assert came apart as she caught a concentrated barrage from the three Syndic battleships forming that corner of the enemy formation. Agile, frantically trying to live up to her name by bending back upward, nonetheless staggered from dozens of hits and tumbled onward, maneuvering and propulsion lost along with many other systems and surely many members of her crew.
The confusion among the battle cruisers following Adroit lessened the Alliance blow against the Syndics. One Syndic battleship shuddered under repeated blows, but despite taking heavy damage to one area, kept going with the formation.
It had all happened in less than the blink of an eye as the formations tore past each other, and now Duellos was bringing his formation around and trying to re-form it while the Syndics raced onward toward the battleship.
“Maybe something went wrong on Adroit,” Desjani said, her voice still reflecting disbelief. “They’re brand-new. Some glitch in the maneuvering controls.”
“Maybe. That was Duellos’s best chance to slow down that flotilla. The battleship with the former Syndic leaders on it is dead meat unless it surrenders and releases them.”
“Which it will,” Desjani said bitterly.
“No. Rione didn’t think so, and neither do I. As long as the battleship fights, her officers stand a chance of survival. If the Syndic leaders they mutinied against regain power, every officer on that ship will die or wish they had.”
The flotilla was closing the remaining distance rapidly, angling slightly so that the single battleship and the three heavy cruisers with it would pass between two corners and the concentration of battle cruisers in the center of the formation. Abruptly, the heavy cruisers with the lone battleship angled away, veering off in different directions as the battleship swung left in an attempt to counter the flotilla’s maneuvers.
“They left that too late,” Desjani commented, as the flotilla overtook the fleeing warships. Two of the escaping heavy cruisers vanished into clouds of wreckage as their former comrades poured fire into them. The third jerked from dozens of impacts, then broke apart, the pieces rolling away.
Even given the firepower it was facing, the Syndic battleship didn’t go easily. It lurched onward as its shields collapsed, and its armor was penetrated repeatedly, firing back with enough effect to knock out one of the battle cruisers and two heavy cruisers.
The Syndic flotilla braked as it went past the battleship, slowing enough to match velocities with the crippled warship. Escape pods began spurting from the battleship, spreading out as they fled the wreck.
The Alliance strike force had re-formed and was approaching again when the Syndic flotilla merged with the battleship once more. “Ancestors preserve us,” Desjani said in a shocked whisper. “They’re shooting up their own escape pods.”
“What the hell is CEO Shalin up to?” Geary asked. “Some of those pods might have members of the former Executive Council on them.”
He hadn’t noticed Rione coming onto the bridge, but she spoke now. “CEO Shalin is eliminating the competition. He intends taking over since he commands the last significant Syndic mobile military force. I wondered if he would realize the opportunity that provided, and it seems he finally did.”
“Then he’ll try to take out the new Executive Council as well.”
“If he can get through us, yes.”
“He won’t. Why the hell are his ships following orders to fire on escape pods carrying Syndic personnel?”
Desjani gave a grim laugh. “Some of them aren’t. Look at his formation.”
The neat box, already in slight disarray because of the rapid braking maneuver, was stretching out of shape as some individual warships veered away from their stations. Geary wished again that his fleet was closer to the action instead of being hours of travel time distant. “We could tear the hell out of them while they’re disorganized like that.”
“They just have to figure out whose side they’re on,” Desjani said. “How many sides do the Syndics have now, anyway? Three?”
“Two,” Rione replied. “Since Shalin has surely killed all of the members of the original Executive Council, that ‘side’ no longer exists, and the choice is now between him and the new Executive Council.”
“If I can get close enough to him,” Geary said, “I’m going to do my best to bring the number of Syndic sides down to one.”
“And I will return to the negotiations, to see how the elimination of the former Executive Council affects the attitudes of the new Executive Council.”
As Rione left, a window popped into existence beside Geary, showing Lieutenant Iger with a delighted expression. “Admiral, sir, we’ve got it.”
“Got what?”
“The flotilla flagship, sir. It’s usually impossible to sort out the flagship because it’s hidden in the local net traffic, but the Syndic flotilla communications are flailing about in some sort of internal dispute, and we were able to spot the flagship. It’s this battle cruiser, sir.” One of the Syndic warships on Geary’s display glowed a little brighter.
“Outstanding.” Geary felt his teeth draw back in a feral smile. “Let’s make sure we keep track of that ship.” He checked distances and times again. The running battle between the Syndic flotilla and the now-wrecked battleship had kept closing the distance to the Alliance fleet, and the surviving Syndics were still heading down the same vector as they focused on whose orders to follow. With the Alliance fleet coming on as well, the travel time to encounter the Syndics was down to just over four hours.
Duellos was a lot closer, but the strike force was in a stern chase after the Syndics, who were still barreling through space at just over point one light speed. It would be close to an hour before Duellos could manage another firing run on the flotilla.