Dauntless (The Lost Fleet, #1)

by Jack Campbell

Geary remembered his promise to Admiral Bloch and tried to look like he knew what he was doing. He’d been a junior officer once, so he’d learned that trick long ago. He wasn’t sure what else he might’ve learned that could really help now.

There’s no glory in smashing people facing impossible odds.

We are sailors of the Alliance, and we will hold ourselves to the standards of honor our ancestors believed in!

So you all knew it wasn’t right. Couldn’t be right. Or you’d have written it down.

Let us live to the highest standards, lest we win this war only to find ourselves staring in the mirror at the face of our late enemy.”

His face began to take on the glow of an engineer presented with a complex problem that he might have the means to solve.

“I could say that sometimes it’s good for the soul to show mercy when none is required or expected.

It isn’t good and it isn’t bad, the old saying went, it just is.