How to answer that? “It depends,” Geary finally stated.

Co-President Rione’s eyes rose and locked on his. “And it’s the job of the commander to judge the situation and decide whether continuing to hope for a miracle is sensible or insane?”

He didn’t like thinking of it in those terms, but… “Yeah. I guess so.”

Rione’s smile appeared to be half-mocking. “Like coming back to Lakota instead of running through Ixion or trying to stand and fight there? I hope your judgment remains as sound in the future, Captain Geary. You seem to have a talent for sniffing out miracles.”

He nodded back, unsure of how to respond to that, then faced forward again, noticing as he did so that Desjani seemed slightly baffled. “What’s the matter?”

Captain Desjani shook her head. “Nothing, sir.”

“Like hell. Is there something I ought to know?”

“No, sir,” Desjani repeated, then twisted her mouth in annoyance before answering in a low voice. “I’m just… surprised to find myself agreeing with Co-President Rione on anything, sir.”

“You’re both crazy.”

Desjani grinned.

“Update on Syndic warships in the Casualty Flotilla,” the operations watch-stander announced.

Geary checked his display. Of the four Syndic battleships undergoing extensive repairs, only one showed signs of powering up any of its weaponry. The others apparently had their systems so badly damaged or extensively dismantled for repairs that they couldn’t be activated on such short notice. Out of the seven battle cruisers in the formation, only two revealed indications that some of their hell-lance batteries were being charged. The twelve heavy cruisers seemed marginally better off, with five showing weapons activity.

One of the Syndic battle cruisers, its propulsion system less badly damaged than that of its fellows, had begun accelerating away at a painfully slow rate. “Running?” Desjani wondered, her fingers dancing across controls as she checked something. “Not on that vector. He’s trying to join with the other damaged ships forming up ahead of the Casualty Flotilla.”

The Syndics were obviously still hoping for their own miracle that would keep the Alliance fleet from annihilating all of the major Syndic combatants currently within reach.

An alert pulsed on his display, drawing Geary’s attention. “The automated combat system is recommending we volley rocks at the Casualty Flotilla.”

“Kinetic projectiles at ships? Those ships are too badly damaged to maneuver much, but it wouldn’t take much to avoid rocks thrown at them from any significant distance.” Desjani made a face, checking the recommendation herself. “We’d have to throw a lot of our supply of rocks out there to form a pattern that would have a decent probability of scoring any hits.”

“Doesn’t seem worth it to me,” Geary agreed. “Hey, what about Audacious?”

“The recommended pattern would avoid hitting the hulk of Audacious, as long as Audacious didn’t maneuver. Which she could if her tugs yank her off her current course, and walk right into one of our rocks.” Desjani shook her head. “And what if the debris from some of the hits on the warships struck the repair ships that we want to loot? Only an artificial intelligence would think this was a good option. I’d give the combat system a ‘disregard option’ instead of just a ‘recommendation noted.’ Otherwise, it’ll keep trying to refine the recommendation and annoying you with updated alerts about it.”

“Good idea.” He thumbed the right commands, hoping the disregard order would work since automated systems sometimes seemed able to ignore such commands and kept insistently pushing options they had already been told to forget about. Another case of automated systems acting a little too human at times. “Any idea what made that big hole in Audacious? It looks like something blew inside.”

Desjani only glanced at her display. “That was her null-field projector self-destructing. The Syndics don’t have null-field weapons yet, so there’s a multiple-redundant self-destruct capability. Just like for Alliance hypernet keys. We don’t want them to fall into enemy hands, either.”

“Have any of them ever self-destructed when they weren’t supposed to?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. The weapons-design bureau assured us that it can’t possibly happen, so we don’t worry about it.” Desjani spoke with apparent total seriousness, but couldn’t quite keep from smiling at the actual absurdity of her statement. While declarations from the weapons design bureau were supposed to be nonfiction, sailors soon learned from experience to treat them all as fantasy until confirmed by real-world events.

Geary barely managed not to laugh. “Of course not.” His alert chimed to mark the arrival of Colonel Carabali’s plan. He skimmed through it, stealing occasional looks at the display to make sure nothing unexpected was happening.

The Marine plan was simple enough, using detachments from all four of the battleships accompanying the Alliance auxiliaries, which were heading straight for the Syndic Casualty Flotilla of which Audacious was a part. Most of the Marines would assault Audacious, using every shuttle available from the battleships and Captain Cresida’s battle cruisers. In addition, each boarding team from an Alliance auxiliary would be accompanied by a single Marine fire team to check for booby traps on the repair ships or some Syndic fanatic determined to die fighting.

He paused at the situation assessment. “I hadn’t noticed the Syndics evacuating Audacious,” he remarked to Desjani.

She checked her own display, tapping some recall commands, then nodded. “They pulled out when the other Syndics were bailing out of the repair ships. That’s why we didn’t notice it, but if you do a situation replay, you can see it clearly enough. There’s no change in the readings from Audacious, so they didn’t vent atmosphere or anything like that.”

“Let’s hope it simplifies things.” He marked the plan approved and sent it back. Even though the Marines had been told they didn’t need positive approval, a clean paper trail on orders usually made people happy.

Ten minutes later, as Geary watched for the arrival of the pursuit force and felt pressure building in his head from the growing tension, he got another alert, this time a high-priority communication. Geary barely suppressed a groan when he saw the identification tag. Captain Casia of Conqueror, one of the biggest openly pain-in-the-butt senior officers whom he had to deal with right now. But this might be legitimately important. Not likely coming from Casia, but he couldn’t risk blowing it off. He tapped the acknowledge control and a window showing Casia’s frowning face popped into existence. “Captain Geary,” Casia stated heavily, “I’ve been informed that Marines attached to my ship will be employed in an operation to rescue presumed Alliance prisoners being held by the Syndics on the wreck of Audacious.”

Geary glanced at Conqueror’s position. Ten light-seconds away. Not too annoying a delay in communications, even if the communication itself looked like it would be annoying. “That’s correct, Captain Casia,” Geary stated in formal tones, then waited to see what Casia’s problem was this time.

“I’ve also been informed that there is no fleet command oversight for the Marines involved,” Casia ground out.

Geary gave Casia’s image a perplexed look. “That’s incorrect, Captain Casia. I’m exercising command over Colonel Carabali, who is in turn directing the Marines according to my orders.”

Twenty seconds later, Casia’s image frowned even deeper as his reply showed up. “Perhaps oversight of Marines on fleet missions was much laxer before the war. I’m talking about the routine practice of fleet officers conducting direct supervision of Marine officers and senior enlisted who are engaged in ship-boarding operations.”