A chief petty officer with a patch from Defiant and one arm in an improvised sling paused as he came out of the compartment. “First time I was ever happy to see a Marine,” he gasped to one. “I could kiss you.”

“I don’t swing that way, Chief,” the Marine replied. “Try my friend over there. But keep moving.”

Another call on the Marine command circuit. “They found another compartment down this way, Lieutenant! Looks like it’s full of space squids, too.”

“Get ’em out here and on the way to the evac tube! Go, go, go!”

Geary broke the connection, wishing he could keep watching but knowing he had other responsibilities. Seeing Desjani watching him, he gave a nod. “The Marines are getting our people off of Audacious. It looks like a lot were on there.”

“Good.” Desjani nodded as well, toward the display before her. “Our auxiliaries are closing on the Syndic repair ships right now.”

The four Alliance auxiliaries had overhauled four big Syndic repair ships, and now were gliding into position directly over the Syndic vessels, conveyor tubes extending outward and down from their undersides as if they were gigantic creatures intent on mating with even more enormous partners. Which, in a way, they were. It took a little playing with his menus, but Geary managed to bring up a diagram showing the activity inside the Syndic ships. Symbols representing Alliance engineers were blowing out bulkhead after bulkhead until clear paths existed into the raw-materials bunkers on the Syndic auxiliaries, then as each path was opened, more Alliance conveyor tubes extended down into the Syndic ships and began draining out their materials.

“Oddly disquieting imagery, isn’t it?” Rione murmured from over his shoulder. She’d gotten up and come to stand just behind him. “Or is that just a woman’s perspective?”

Geary shook his head. “Not once the conveyor tubes started sucking stuff out of those Syndic ships. I guess we’re not used to seeing parasites on that scale.”

“Do they have what we need?”

“Some of it.” Geary scowled at the display. Multiple overlapping windows showed exhaustive detail on fleet requirements and what had been discovered inside the Syndic repair ships. The mass of small type and unfamiliar terms made it impossible for him to figure out what was happening. “Why can’t this just tell me how much we need of each material and how much we’re getting? Captain Desjani, could you ask your engineering watch-stander to pop me up a display showing in simple terms where we stand on refilling our auxiliaries’ bunkers?”

Desjani nodded and passed on the order, then smiled with satisfaction. “We’ve received two heavy resupply shuttles from Titan, sir. Dauntless will be back up to sixty-five percent fuel-cell reserves when the new ones are installed. We’ve also received sixty more canisters of grapeshot and seven new specters as well as some major spare parts we needed but weren’t able to fabricate ourselves.”

“Excellent. Is that all Titan is sending Dauntless?”

“Time permitting, we’ll get a third shuttle, sir.”

Even better. Geary felt himself smiling. “Now if we can only get food.”

The engineering watch-stander had come up and now cleared his throat to attract attention. “Excuse me, sir. If I may…” His fingers tapped controls rapidly, then Geary saw a window appear with bar graphs showing total capacity of the bunkers on his auxiliaries, total materials found on the Syndic auxiliaries, and how much had been transferred. “Thanks. What’s this column?”

“Food, sir,” the engineer replied in that self-satisfied way of someone who’d already answered a question his superior hadn’t yet asked him. “The Syndic ships we’ve boarded have all had food stocks on them. From what I’ve overheard, the stocks on the civilian ships are actually really decent food. It’s not nearly enough, but we are acquiring more food here as well.”

“Are samples being screened for contamination?” Rione demanded.

The engineer looked startled. “Yes, Madam Co-President. I’m sure they are, just like the raw materials we’re pulling out of the bunkers. I’ll double-check, though.”

“Full screening. Macro, micro, nano, organic, and inorganic, ” Rione added.

“Yes, Madam Co-President. I’ll ensure they understand, uh…” The engineer paused, clearly wondering if Rione was able to give orders to him and the four Alliance auxiliary ships.

“Make sure it’s done,” Geary said.

Relieved to have gotten an order from someone he knew could issue one, the engineer saluted and hastened back to his watch station to pass on the orders.

“My apologies for confusing your engineer,” Rione stated. “I should have asked you to tell him to do that.”

“No harm done, and I’m glad you brought it up. With everything else going on, somebody might have neglected to make every possible check of whether those Syndic food stocks were poisoned before their ships were abandoned.”

“Sometimes it’s good to have a devious politician around, isn’t it?” Rione turned to go back to her seat, then paused as another message came in for Geary.

Colonel Carabali looked contented in a Marine sort of way. “We believe we’ve found all of the prisoner compartments on the remains of Audacious,” she reported. “It’s a wonder there weren’t a lot of dead because of the crowded conditions and inadequate life support, but apparently the senior personnel in each compartment kept the prisoners rotating so none of them were overwhelmed. My scouts estimated that within another day or so the prisoners would’ve started dying from the conditions. They all need food, and most have barely treated injuries. Minor injuries were left untreated by the Syndics.”

“How many?” Geary asked, thinking of the sizes of the crews on the Alliance warships that had been lost in this star system.

“We’re still getting a count. Roughly nine hundred fleet personnel and eighteen Marines. Captain Cresida insisted on most of them going to Furious, Implacable, and the heavy cruisers with the formation even though the battleships wanted some. Captain Casia did intercept a few shuttle loads for Conqueror.” Carabali’s tone made it clear that she didn’t consider it the Marines’ job to straighten out disputes among fleet officers. “Apparently other Alliance prisoners were taken to other Syndic ships while we were gone from Lakota, so there are more somewhere in this star system. Merchant ships pressed into service as prisoner haulers, according to the ones we liberated. Any chance we can get them?”

“Not much, and getting less by the second.” The Syndic pursuit force could appear at any moment, and the more time that passed, the more likely it would show up very soon. “We only overran two Syndic merchant ships near us, and both were full of supplies. There are a couple dozen more merchant ships visible in this star system, but they’re out of our reach, and we can’t tell what they’re carrying. Since we haven’t spotted any labor camps in this star system with Alliance personnel in them, our personnel taken prisoner might have been on other ships that quickly left this star system.”

“I understand, sir. We’re preparing to pull out of Audacious,” Colonel Carabali reported. “What do we do with what’s left of the ship?”

Geary grimaced. As much as he wanted to save that ship, what remained of Audacious couldn’t possibly defend itself, couldn’t possibly keep up with the fleet, couldn’t be towed without hazarding the rest of the fleet, and probably couldn’t be repaired at all even in the best shipyard imaginable. A brave warship now faced only one possible fate, the scrap-yard. And there wasn’t any sense in letting the Syndics have that metal. “Can we blow her power core?”

“Yes, sir. It’s plenty strong enough to do the job.”

“Then set it for overload in six hours and get out of there.”