Текст книги "Valiant"

Автор книги: Jack Campbell

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Valiant picks up right where the third book, Courageous, left off, with the Alliance fleet leaving through the Ixion Star System's worm hole to return back to the Lakota Star System.

Valiant

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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South Africa

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

Ace mass-market edition / July 2008

All rights reserved.

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Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

Valiant

Jack Campbell

ONE

TWO of the armored bulkheads surrounding hell-lance battery three alpha on the Alliance battle cruiser Dauntlessshone like new. They were new, the broken fragments of the originals having been cut away and new material fastened into position. The other two sides of the compartment housing the hell-lance battery were scarred by enemy fire but in good enough shape to have been left in place. The hell-lance projectors themselves betrayed recent repairs, using improvised fixes that would never pass muster with a fleet inspection team, but the nearest fleet inspection team was a great distance away back in Alliance space. For now, with the Alliance fleet trapped deep inside Syndicate Worlds’ space, all that mattered was that these hell lances were ready once again to hurl their charged-particle spears at the enemy.

Captain John Geary ran his eyes down the rank of the hell-lance battery’s crew. Half of the sailors here were new to this battery, having been cannibalized from other hell-lance crews on the ship to replace losses suffered at Lakota Star System. Like their battery, two of the original crew still bore marks of combat, one with a flex-cast covering his upper arm and another with a heal-pad sealed over the side of her leg. Walking wounded, who should have been allowed to recuperate before returning to their guns, but that was a luxury neither Dauntlessnor any other ship in the Alliance fleet could afford right now. Not with combat once again imminent and the fleet in danger of total destruction.

“They insisted on returning to their duty station,” Captain Tanya Desjani murmured to Geary, her expression proud. Her ship and her crew. They’d fought hard and well, they’d worked around the clock to get this battery back online and ready to engage, and now they were ready to fight again.

He couldn’t forget that the damage that had been repaired, the sailors who weren’t here because their bodies awaited burial, were the result of his decisions.

And yet now those sailors watched him with eyes reflecting confidence, pride, determination, and their unnerving faith in Black Jack Geary, legendary hero of the Alliance. They were still ready to follow him. They were following his orders, right back to the place where this fleet had left a lot of destroyed ships. “Damn fine work,” Geary stated, trying to put the right amount of emotion into his voice and no more. He knew he had to sound concerned and impressed but not overwrought. “I’ve never served with a better crew or one that fought harder.” True enough. Before being rescued from a century of survival sleep and brought aboard Dauntless, his combat experience had consisted of a single, hopeless battle. Now he had a fleet of ships and sailors depending on him, not to mention the fate of the Alliance itself.

And maybe the fate of humanity as well.

No pressure. No pressure at all.

Geary smiled at the crew of the hell-lance battery. “In six hours we’ll be back in Lakota Star System, and we’ll give you something to shoot at.” The sailors grinned back fiercely. “Get a little rest before then. Captain Desjani?”

She nodded to him. “At ease,” she ordered the gun crew. “You’re off duty for the next four hours, and authorized full rations.” The sailors smiled again. With food stocks running low, meals had been cut back to stretch available supplies.

“The Syndics will be sorry we came back to Lakota,” Geary promised.

“Dismissed,” Desjani added, then followed Geary as he left the battery. “I didn’t think we could get Three Alpha fully operational in time,” she confessed. “They really did a fantastic job.”

“They’ve got a good captain,” Geary observed, and Desjani looked abashed at the praise even though she was a seasoned veteran of far more battles than Geary had fought. “How’s Dauntlessdoing otherwise?” he asked. He could have simply looked up the data in the fleet readiness system, but preferred being able to talk to an officer or a sailor about things like that.

“All hell lances operational, null-field projector operational, all combat systems optimal, all hull damage from Lakota either repaired or sealed off until we can get to it,” Desjani recited immediately. “We’re at full maneuvering capability.”

“What about expendables?”

Desjani grimaced. “No specter missiles left, twenty-three canisters of grapeshot remaining, five mines, fuel-cell reserves at fifty-one percent.”

Ships were never supposed to go below 70 percent fuel-cell reserves, to leave enough margin of safety. Unfortunately, every other ship in the fleet was at about the same level of fuel-cell reserves as Dauntless, and he didn’t know when he could get any of those ships back up to 70 percent even if they managed to fight their way out of Lakota again.

As if reading his mind, Desjani nodded confidently. “We’ve got the auxiliaries with us to manufacture new expendables, sir.”

“The auxiliaries have been building new expendables and repair parts as fast as they can. Their raw-material bunkers are almost empty again,” Geary reminded her.

“Lakota will have more.” Desjani smiled at him. “You can’t fail.” She halted for a moment and saluted him. “I need to check on a few more things before we reach Lakota. By your leave, sir.”

He couldn’t help smiling back even though Desjani’s confidence in him, shared by many others in the fleet, was unnerving. They believed he’d been sent by the living stars themselves to save the Alliance, miraculously found frozen in survival sleep but still alive, just in time to get stuck with command of a fleet trapped deep in enemy space. They’d grown up being told the legend of the great Black Jack Geary, epitome of an Alliance officer and a hero out of myth. The fact that he wasn’t that myth didn’t seem to have impressed them yet. But Desjani had seen enough of him firsthand to know that he wasn’t a myth, and she still believed in him. Since Geary thought a great deal of Desjani’s own judgment, that was very reassuring.

Especially in comparison to those officers in the fleet who still thought he was a fraud or the mere shell of a once-great hero. That group had been working to undermine his command since he’d very reluctantly taken over the fleet after Admiral Bloch was murdered by the Syndics. He hadn’t wanted that command, still being dazed by the shock of learning that the people and places he had known were now a century in the past. However, as far as Geary was concerned, he hadn’t had much choice but to assume command since his date of commission was also about a hundred years ago, making him by far the most senior captain in the fleet.

Geary returned Desjani’s salute. “Sure. A ship captain’s work is never done. I’ll see you on the bridge in a few hours.”

This time Desjani’s grin was fiercer as she anticipated battle with the forces of the Syndicate Worlds. “They won’t know what hit them,” she vowed as she headed off down the passageway.

Either that or we won’t,Geary couldn’t help thinking. It had been an insane decision, to take a fleet fleeing a trap from which it had barely escaped and turn it to charge right back into the enemy star system in which it had narrowly avoided being destroyed. But the officers and sailors on Dauntlesshad cheered it, and he had no doubt those on other ships had as well. There were many things he was still trying to figure out about these sailors of the Alliance in a time a century removed from his own, but he knew they could and would fight like hell. If they were going to die, they wanted to do it facing the enemy, on the attack, not running away.

Not that most of them expected to die, because most of them trusted him to lead them home safely and save the Alliance in the bargain. May my ancestors help me.

VICTORIA Rione, Co-President of the Callas Republic and member of the Alliance Senate, was waiting in his stateroom. Geary paused as he saw her. She had access to his room at any time since she’d spent quite a few nights here at sporadic intervals, but Rione had mostly avoided him since Geary had ordered the fleet back to Lakota. “What’s the occasion? ” he asked.

Rione shrugged. “We’ll be back at Lakota in five and a half hours. This may be the last time we get a chance to talk since the fleet could be destroyed soon afterward.”

“I don’t think that’s a good way to inspire me before battle,” Geary observed, sitting down opposite her.

She sighed and shook her head. “It’s insane. When you turned this fleet around to go back to Lakota, I couldn’t believe it, then everyone around me started cheering. I don’t understand you or them. Why are the officers and crew happy?”

He knew what she meant. The fleet was low on fuel cells, very low on expendable munitions, damaged from the battle at Lakota and previous encounters with Syndic forces, the formation a tangle from the frantic retreat out of Lakota and the hasty reversal to head back to the enemy star system. Looked at rationally, it seemed insane to attack again, yet in one moment back at Ixion he had known it was the right move to rally his fleet. The fact that either trying to make a stand at Ixion or fleeing through that star system would have guaranteed destruction had made the decision easier. “It’s hard to explain. They have confidence in me, they have confidence in themselves.”

“But they’re rushing back to fight in a place they barely escaped from! Why should that please them? It makes no sense.”

Geary frowned, trying to put something he knew on a gut level into words. “Everyone in the fleet knows they’re going to face death. They know they’ll be ordered to charge straight at somebody else who will be doing their level best to kill them, and they’ll be trying to kill the other guy. Maybe being happy to be going back to fight at Lakota doesn’t make sense, but what else about what they have to do makes sense? It’s about being willing to do that, to keep hitting longer and harder than the other guy and believing that will make a difference. They believe defeating the Syndics is critical to defending their own homes, they believe they have a duty to defend those homes, and they’re willing to die fighting. Why? Because.”

Rione sighed more heavily. “I’m just a politician. We order our warriors to fight. I understand why they fight, but I can’t understand why they’re cheering this move.”

“I can’t claim to really understand it myself. It just is.”

“They cheered the orders, and obeyed them, because you gave them,” Rione added. “What are these warriors fighting for, John Geary? The chance to get home? To protect the Alliance? Or for you?”

He couldn’t help a small laugh. “The first and the second, which are really the same thing since the Alliance needs this fleet to survive. Maybe a little bit of the third.”

“A bit?” Rione snorted her derision. “This from the man who’s been offered a dictatorship? If we survive our return to Lakota, Captain Badaya and his like will make that offer again.”

“And I’ll turn it down again. If you’ll recall, all the way to Ixion we were worried that I’d be deposed as commander of this fleet once we reached that star system. At least this is a better problem to worry about.”

“Don’t think your opponents among the senior officers in this fleet will stop just because you did something that has most of the fleet cheering!” Rione reached to tap some controls, and an image of Lakota Star System sprang to life over the table his stateroom boasted. Frozen on the display were the positions Syndic warships had occupied at the moment the Alliance fleet had jumped out of Lakota. A lot of Syndic warships, substantially outnumbering the battered Alliance fleet. “You told me we couldn’t have survived if we tried to run through Ixion. All right. Why will things be different once we reach Lakota again?”

Geary pointed to the display. “Among other things, if we’d tried to run through Ixion Star System, the Syndic pursuit probably would have appeared behind us within a matter of hours. We’d had five and half days in jump space to repair damage from the battles in Lakota, but that wasn’t enough. By turning and jumping back to Lakota, we gained another five and a half days for our damaged ships to repair themselves. There are limits to the repairs we can do in jump space, and I won’t be able to get status updates from other ships until we enter normal space again, but every ship has orders to put priority to getting all of their propulsion units back online. At the very least, we’ll be able to run faster once we emerge into normal space again at Lakota. That’s not to mention the other repairs that ships are getting done, to weapons and armor and other damaged systems. By the time we emerge at Lakota, our ships will have had eleven days to repair the damage they suffered in our last encounter. ”

“I understand that, but we’ll still be low on supplies and deep in enemy territory,” Rione said. She shook her head. “Certainly we won’t encounter the same size force of Syndic warships that we left at Lakota. They must have sent a powerful force in pursuit of us. But there’ll be some Syndic warships there, and the ones that followed us surely turned around the moment they realized we must have turned and jumped back for Lakota. Those ships will still be only hours behind us.”

“They had to assume we might wait in ambush outside the jump point at Ixion,” Geary pointed out. “So they spent at least a few hours getting their own formation ready before they jumped after us. They must have come out at Ixion going a lot faster than we did, which means they’ll take longer to get turned around, and since they have to assume we might ambush them at Lakota, too, they would’ve needed to keep their formation, which would also have taken more time than what we did, turning every ship in place. Give us three hours before the pursuit force arrives, and we might make it. Give me six hours, and there’s a decent chance we can get this fleet to another jump point and safely out of Lakota.”

“They’ll still be right behind us, and we’ll still be low on supplies.”

“They’ve been running harder and maneuvering more than we have. If they don’t stop to replenish their own fuel cells and weapons, they’ll be in trouble, too. And if we get a breather in normal space, our auxiliaries can distribute to our warships the fuel cells and weapons they’ve manufactured in the last eleven days. That’ll help. But you don’t have to remind me that we’re low on everything. Dauntlessis barely above fifty percent on its fuel cells.”

“Is that what you and your Captain Desjani were doing? Checking fuel-cell status?”

Geary frowned. How had Rione known he was with Desjani? “She’s not ‘my’ Captain Desjani. We were inspecting a hell-lance battery.”

“How romantic.”

“Knock it off, Victoria! It’s bad enough that my enemies in this fleet are spreading rumors that I’m involved with Desjani. I don’t need you repeating them!”

It was Rione’s turn to frown. “I don’t repeat them. I don’t want to undermine your command of this fleet. But if you continue to be seen with another officer with whom rumor links you-”

“I’m supposed to avoid the captain of my flagship?”

“You don’t wantto avoid her, Captain John Geary.” Rione stood up. “But that’s your affair, if you’ll pardon the term.”

“Victoria, I’ve got a battle coming up, and I really don’t need distractions like this.”

“My apologies.” He couldn’t tell if she was really sorry or not. “I hope your strategy of desperation works. You’ve been randomly alternating between cautious actions and wildly risky moves ever since you gained command of this fleet, and it’s kept the Syndics off balance. Maybe that will work again. I’ll see you on the bridge in five hours.”

He watched her go, then leaned back, wondering what Rione was thinking now. Aside from being his off-and-on lover, this period being one of those “off” times, she’d been an invaluable adviser since she never hesitated to speak her mind. But she kept her secrets. The only thing he knew for certain was that her loyalty to the Alliance was unshakeable.

A century before, the Syndics had launched surprise attacks on the Alliance and begun a war they couldn’t win. The Alliance was too big, with too many resources. But so were the Syndicate Worlds. A century of stalemate, of bitter war, of uncountable dead on both sides. A century of Alliance youth being taught to revere the heroic figure of John “Black Jack” Geary and his last stand at Grendel Star System. A century in which everyone he had once known had died, in which the places he had known had changed. Even the fleet had changed. Not just better weapons and such, but a hundred years of trading atrocities with the Syndics had turned his own people into something he hadn’t recognized.

He’d changed, too, since being forced to take command of the fleet as it teetered on the brink of total destruction. But at least he’d reminded these descendants of the people he’d known what real honor was, what the principles were that the Alliance was supposed to stand for. He hadn’t been remotely prepared to command a fleet of this size, let alone one crewed by officers and sailors who thought differently from him, but together they’d made it this far toward home. Their home, that is. His home wouldn’t be recognizable. But he’d promised to get them home, his duty demanded it, and he was damned well going to get the job done or die trying.

His gaze came to rest on the display of Lakota Star System. So many Syndic warships. But the Syndics had been hurt during the last engagement, too. It had been impossible to be sure how badly hurt with the final hours a flurry of battles throwing out debris that blocked the views of sensors. He couldn’t even know what losses the Alliance battleships Defiant, Audacious, and Indefatigablehad inflicted in their last moments of life as they held off the Syndics long enough for the rest of the fleet to escape.

How confident had the Syndic commander been that the Alliance fleet was truly beaten this time and would only keep fleeing blindly? How many Syndic warships had pursued the Alliance fleet to Ixion, and how many had been left behind to guard against the unlikely (or insane, depending on the viewpoint) possibility that Alliance warships would quickly return to Lakota? The only way to answer those questions would be to stick the fleet’s head in the lion’s mouth and see what shape the lion’s teeth were in.

He checked the time again. In four and a half more hours, they’d know.

DAUNTLESS’S bridge had grown comfortingly familiar since his first time here in the wake of Admiral Bloch’s death. Not the physical layout, which now seemed natural, but the equipment both more advanced than he’d once known and cruder in its outward appearance, the triumph of necessity over form. A century ago, on Geary’s last ship, everything had been smooth, with clean lines and careful attention to outward show. But that ship had been designed and built with the expectation that it would serve for decades, one of comparatively few warships in a fleet not engaged in combat. Dauntless, on the other hand, reflected generations of warships constructed hastily to replace increasingly horrible losses, with an expected life span measured in a couple of years at best. Rough edges, ragged welds, uneven surfaces were good enough for a ship that might be destroyed in its first engagement, to be quickly replaced by another bearing the same name. Geary still hadn’t gotten used to the expendable-ship philosophy born of ugly experience, which those rough edges broadcast.

Expendable ships and expendable crews. So much knowledge of tactics had been lost in a century of trained personnel dying before they could pass on their learning and experience to new generations of sailors. Battles had degenerated into slugging matches, with head-on charges and hideous losses. It had been far easier to accept the roughness of the edges on the ship than it had to been to accept the kind of combat casualties this fleet had regarded as routine.

But he’d kept Dauntlessand her crew alive all the way from the Syndic home system to here, coming to know them until they were a comfort instead of a jarring reminder of those long dead. The watch-standers he had come to recognize and know by name, the amateurs he’d helped keep alive long enough for them to gain experience. Most of Dauntless’s crew had come from the planet Kosatka, a place Geary had visited once, literally more than a hundred years ago. Alone in this future, he’d come to see them as a family to partly replace what he had lost.

Captain Desjani smiled at him in greeting as Geary strode onto the bridge and dropped into his fleet command seat, positioned next to Desjani’s own ship’s captain command seat. She’d startled him at first, too, with her bloodthirstiness toward the enemy and willingness to accept tactics that appalled Geary. But he’d come to understand the reasons for her attitudes, and she’d listened to him and adopted beliefs closer to those of her ancestors. Besides which, his ancestors knew what a capable captain she was and how well she could handle her ship in action. Now Desjani’s presence was undeniably the most comforting thing on this bridge. “We’re ready, Captain Geary,” she reported.

“I never doubted that.” He tried to breathe calmly, look confident, speak with assurance. Even though he dreaded what might be awaiting this fleet when it left the jump point at Lakota, he knew he was always being watched by officers and sailors whose own confidence depended on what they saw in him.

“Five minutes to exit,” the operations watch-stander announced.

Captain Desjani not only appeared calm and confident, she actually seemed to feel that way. But then Desjani always seemed to get more serene as combat and the chance to blow away Syndics drew closer. Now she looked at Geary and smiled tightly. “We’ve got some comrades to avenge in this star system.”

“Yeah,” Geary agreed, wondering whether or not Captain Mosko had survived the death of his battleship Defiant. Not likely. But Mosko was just one among many Alliance sailors who might have survived to be taken prisoner at Lakota. In addition to four battleships and a battle cruiser, the Alliance fleet had lost two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and four destroyers fighting the Syndics at Lakota. Maybe we’ll get a chance to liberate some of them. The Syndics shouldn’t have been in any hurry to move those prisoners anywhere, so maybe some are still where we can reach them.

The hatch to the bridge opened, and Geary looked back to see Rione taking the observer’s seat in the back. Her eyes met his, she nodded at him with a cool expression, then Rione sat back to gaze at her own display. Desjani, apparently busy with her own work, didn’t turn to greet Rione, and for her part the Alliance politician didn’t seem to take notice.

“Two minutes to exit.”

Desjani turned back to Geary. “Do you wish to address the crew, sir?”

Did he? “Yes.” Geary paused to gather his thoughts. He’d had far too much experience with giving speeches before battles since assuming command of the fleet. Triggering the internal comm circuit, he put every effort into sounding upbeat. “Officers and crew of Dauntless, I am once more honored to be leading this fleet and this ship into combat. We expect to encounter Syndic defenders immediately upon exiting jump. I know we’ll make them sorry they met us, and we won’t leave Lakota without avenging our comrades who were lost here. To the honor of our ancestors.”

Another announcement came on the heels of his closing sentence. “Thirty seconds to exit.”

Desjani’s voice rang through the bridge. “All combat systems active. Shields at maximum. Prepare to engage the enemy.”

"Exit.”

The gray emptiness of jump space went away in an instant’s time, replaced by the star-filled darkness of normal space. The Syndic minefield was still there, of course, but Dauntlessand the other Alliance ships were already turning upward sharply as they exited the jump point, maneuvering to avoid the mines. Geary scanned his display anxiously, praying that the Syndics hadn’t laid more mines outside the jump point.

The star-system display had been frozen, showing the situation as it had existed in this star system when the fleet jumped out less than two weeks ago, the enemy-ship positions shown all tagged with “last-known-position” markers, which really meant “it could be anywhere except this exact location.” Now the old ship symbols disappeared in a flurry of updates as the fleet’s sensors scanned their surroundings and made identifications.

Geary squinted, trying to take it all in. There weren’t any defenders right at the jump exit, but there were Syndic ships scattered all over the system it seemed. Lots of them. He had a momentary sinking feeling as he saw the numbers of enemy warships still within Lakota. Had he truly jumped right back into the teeth of superior enemy forces?

Then he focused on the identifying data and readiness assessments and saw a very different picture. The big cluster of Syndic ships located ten light-minutes from the jump exit consisted in great part of large numbers of repair ships, and the warships in it were all damaged significantly, with many systems evaluated as off-line while they were being fixed. The entire formation, a flattened sphere, was limping in-system at barely point zero two light speed.

The next largest formation, almost thirty light-minutes from the jump exit, had a mix of fully operational and slightly damaged warships, but only four battleships and two battle cruisers were among them.

All over the expanse of Lakota Star System between the jump exit and the inhabited world were other Syndic ships. Less badly damaged but still mauled Syndic warships crawling toward the orbital docks, freighters hauling supplies, civilian ships crossing between planets. Scores of sitting ducks, with too few guards standing sentry over them to stop the Alliance fleet from bagging every one within reach.

Desjani let out a gasp of pure pleasure. “Captain Geary, we are going to hurtthem.”

“Looks like it.” His own formation was a jumbled mess, but he couldn’t take time to sort it out now. He had a lead on the main Syndic pursuit force which had followed them to Ixion, but they’d come back through this jump exit sooner or later, and he didn’t want the damaged Syndic warships and all of those helpless repair ships to get away.

As if reading his mind, Desjani pointed to the depictions of the enemy repair ships. “Preliminary assessments are they’re pretty heavily loaded. They won’t be able to run fast even if they can break away from the ships they’ve been fixing up.”

“Too bad our own auxiliaries can run faster because they’re notheavily loaded,” Geary remarked, then he and Desjani exchanged a glance as the same idea apparently hit them both. “Is there any chance we can take those Syndic repair ships intact? We can’t use any spares they’ve manufactured, but if they’ve got raw-material stockpiles on board, we can transfer those to our auxiliaries.”

Desjani rubbed the back of her neck with one hand as she thought. “You’d think the Syndics would set the power cores on them to overload when they abandon ship. Lieutenant Nicodeom,” she called to one of the watch-standers. “You’re an engineer. Will they blow up those repair ships when we close to engage?”

The lieutenant frowned at his own display for a moment. “Blowing up a ship by core overload is done when recovery is judged highly unlikely, Captain. We don’t blow up our own ships, no matter how badly damaged, in a star system we control. As far as I know, the Syndics follow the same policy.”

“And this is a Syndic star system!” Desjani turned an enthusiastic look on Geary. “They’ll abandon ship when we shoot them up, but leave the ships intact. They know we can’t stay in this system, so they’ll want the ships recoverable once we leave, and they don’t know we want to loot them. We just have to make sure they don’t realize we’re seizing some of the repair ships intact until we’ve got as many as we need.”

“Okay.” Geary tried to calm himself. It seemed too good to be true, but it still wouldn’t be easy to carry it out. “We can send most of the destroyers and light cruisers after the damaged Syndic warships proceeding independently, and send our battleships and battle cruisers toward the repair ships and the crippled warships with them. Some of those damaged Syndic warships could have substantial firepower available if they manage to get combat systems back online before we intercept. But we also need to hit the operational Syndic flotilla thirty minutes away hard, so they-” Something finally registered on him. “There’s nothing at the hypernet gate. The Syndics pulled their guard flotilla out of there.”