Follow TV Tropes

Following

Literature / The Lost Fleet

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/9eb32356202153467ba94a1ac7ac7f3a.jpg

The Lost Fleet is a military science fiction series by Jack Campbell (actual name John G. Hemry). John "Black Jack" Geary of the Alliance Navy is escorting some merchant ships when the convoy is attacked in the first strike by the Syndicate Worlds, or Syndics. He fights a rear guard action, ejecting from his ship at the last moment, but the transmitter of the escape pod is broken, so he isn't found for nearly a century.

When he's awakened, the fleet is preparing to use the enemy hypernet gate network, with a traitor-provided key, to strike at the Syndic home system. It goes wrong. He takes command of the fleet and must use his knowledge of forgotten tactics to save the fleet from certain destruction deep behind enemy lines. The attrition rate of ships and experienced personnel has forced the Alliance to cut down costs and production times and replace traditional officer training with a twisted code of honor that demands attacking the enemy head on.

The only good news, until Geary shows up, is that the Syndics have had to do the same. He also has to defend himself against the treachery and stupidity of dissenting captains, and keep his love interests from killing each other. Also, there seems to be a mysterious race of Aliens behind the ongoing war and the barely-understood technology of the hypernet gates.

Two follow on series continue the store of Captain Geary and the leaders of a particular planet. The first, Beyond the Frontier, follows now Admiral Geary as the fleet investigates the aliens and continues to fight internal forces that threaten it and the Alliance. The second deals with the break-up of the Syndicate Worlds from the perspective of Syndic CEOs Iceni and Drakon, the leaders of Midway as they fight to maintain order (and power) on their planet and nearby worlds.

The completed series is composed of six books:

  • Dauntless
  • Fearless
  • Courageous
  • Valiant
  • Relentless
  • Victorious

The second series Beyond the Frontier:

  • Dreadnaught
  • Invincible
  • Guardian
  • Steadfast
  • Leviathan

The third series Outlands:

  • Boundless
  • Resolute
  • Implacable

And Four short stories:

  • Grendel, set prior to the Forever War, following Geary.
  • Fleche, set during the Forever War, following Desjani.
  • Shore Patrol Set long before the Forever War, following Geary.
  • Ishigaki: Set during the first decade of the Forever War: following two of Geary's former crew members as they deal with his legacy, and the direction the war is taking.

There is also a comic book series Lost Fleet: Corsair, staring Geary's grandnephew, Michael. All of the previously published short stories, and an extended prose version of the Corsair story are collected in the anthology collection Rendezvous with Corsair.

For the P.O.V. Sequel series, see The Lost Stars.\\For the prequel series see The Genesis Fleet


The Lost Fleet provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 
    Tropes # to D 
  • 2-D Space:
    • Averted. The formations and tactics used by Geary are not simply 3 dimensional, but 4 dimensional. Time plays an incredibly decisive factor in winning a battle, especially since everything the commander sees is happening hours after it happened and everybody is moving fast enough that time dilation is a non-trivial issue. At one point, Geary is simply unable to micromanage every part of his fleet in the middle of battle trying to account for it all.
    • Invoked in Dreadnaught, where it is used to interpret new regions in a simpler fashion and figure out that the Enigma Race has political borders within its own territory, indicating that the species is subdivided into factions.
  • Absolute Xenophobe: The bear-cows take this to the limit, as they're so totally convinced that every other sentient life-form is a voracious predator that they'd rather commit suicide than be forced to speak to aliens, they've wiped out all life on their own homeworld that wasn't absolutely necessary to their own survival, and plotless simulations of bear-cow armies wiping out alien forces are literally their only known form of entertainment.
  • Aborted Arc: The Shield of Sol and who is behind them. It's speculated that they come from some ancient colony or colonies in a different galactic direction, but the dark ship storyline takes over around that time.
    • Or it's more foreshadowing underlining how often mankind has done incredibly stupid things, ie: creating deadly viruses or giving control of warships to A.I.s.
      • The fourth book has Geary giving command of the Orion to Commander Savos, the captain of a destroyed smaller warship after having to relieve its second captain of command, hoping he can whip the ship into shape. Savos is never mentioned again and Orion continues to perform poorly until the events of Beyond the Frontier.
  • Accidental Adultery: Towards the middle of the original series, Rione, who has been sleeping with Captain Geary up to this point, discovers that her husband might actually be alive and kept as a prisoner of war. This causes her to immediately break off her current relationship, which was already a Friends with Benefits situation at best.
  • Accidental Hero: Captain Geary. The Alliance government made him this after his last stand to inspire the Alliance in the war. When asked about his heroics, Geary is the first to point out that he was in exactly one battle before being stuck in stasis, and that was the one where he lost his ship and was only saved from death by dumb luck.
  • The Ace: Played with but ultimately used straight with Geary. He doesn't feel like this trope is in effect and that he is only human and flawed. However as everyone keeps reminding him he's pretty much pulled off the impossible several times. Senator Navarro summing up the first five books:
    " All right Captain Geary. You saved the Alliance fleet and the Alliance itself, you practically wiped out the Syndic fleet and established conditions favorable for forcing an end to the war, you've both discovered and neutralized a threat to all humanity, and you've established the real likelihood that a nonhuman intelligent species exists. Is there anything else?"
  • Affectionate Gesture to the Head: The "hug" that the Dancers perform, doing so with Rione after they first establish contact with humanity. Rione is noticeably uncomfortable with this, but so is the Dancer, as both humans and Dancers find each other hideous.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Invoked as the reason why neither side will use artificial intelligence to pilot their ships. Not that it's happened yet but they are so scared of it happening.
    • In Steadfast, this comes to the foreground of the series:
    • The book begins with Geary visiting Stonehenge but being more struck by a large ground combat vehicle rusting near it. A guide explains that it was a tank, one of several that were AI controlled and hacked by people who wanted to destroy Stonehenge. Only with significant bravery and loss of life were they stopped.
    • At the end of the book, they realize that a mysterious new 'dark fleet' that just indiscriminately attacked a Syndic and a neutral system and destroyed Alliance shipping has no organics in the debris of destroyed ships, strongly indicating they had no crew.
    • The dark fleet is programmed to fight like Geary, but doesn't have any real understanding of why Geary fights the way he does. This occasionally leads the fleet to do things which make sense for a human commander but not an AI commander like fall back to cover heavily damaged ships. Geary would do this to try to rescue what survivors he can; since the crippled dark fleet ship had no crew, this action served no purpose except to divert ships needed to pursue a primary objective for no gain.
    • Another problem with AI that is mentioned is that humans are capable of understanding that there are times to bend or break the rules, while machines can't. As such, at one point the Dark Fleet is forced to retreat from a battle it could have won because they were programmed with regulations which required that ships whose fuel reserves had dropped below a certain level return to base for resupply. If there positions had been reversed, Geary would have continued the engagement for the brief period of time needed to finish the battle, and then gone back for resupply. Even in later engagements, the best the Dark Fleet can do to get around that limit is to not redline their systems all the time so that they can last longer without running out of fuel.
    • Leviathan deals with the realization the A.I.s controlling the dark fleet are very probably psychopathic. The Dancers also send ships to aid Geary in destroying the dark fleet, with the insinuation they faced a similar problem in their past and consider AI combatants as too dangerous to be allowed to exist.
    • On a lighter note, there is a quirk within the programming of the AI responsible for fleet assignments, resulting in situations where the commanding admirals of a region all having last names beginning with the letter "E" and ships being crewed by sailors with the same last name (at least until fleet command realized what was happening and stepped in to manually prevent this nonsense).
  • Alien Blood: During a firefight between Marines and the Kicks, Geary notes that the Kicks are bleeding purplish blood.
  • Aliens Never Invented the Wheel: The Dancers / spider-wolves never invented duct tape or any equivalent "universal fixing substance(s)."
  • The Alliance: A huge conglomeration of systems actually called the Alliance, and at least two other nations, the Rift Federation and the Callas Republic.
  • Alliterative Family: Jaylen Cresida's sister is named Jasmine.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Michael, Geary's grandnephew, is forced to Hold the Line at the very beginning of the series. It's brought up over and over again over the following books that he might have survived and been taken prisoner, but that the odds would be against it. Even after the war has ended, it's not clear if he's alive or not. The Enemy Civil War the Syndic Worlds fell into made it impossible to get accurate reports from all of the Syndic POW camps. However, a spinoff comic series has been announced, revealing that he did survive, and that the comic will surround him leading a prison break. He makes it to Midway space and hooks up with Geary's fleet in the first Outlands book.
  • Ancestor Veneration: Ancestor veneration is the dominant religion in Alliance space. It's mixed with a spiritual take on the role played by stars in creating the materials of life, with ancestors believed to be residing in "the living stars" until some future rebirth. The protagonist frequently visits the shrines in the most protected part of his flagship to seek guidance — and he believes he gets it, although the books themselves stay in Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane territory. He is discomforted to learn that some people see him as half-way to being a venerable ancestor himself — he spent a hundred years in a stasis life-pod while everyone thought he was dead, and now some religiously-inclined people believe that he was personally among the ancestors and has been "sent back" to save everyone. (He does note a positive side, however — hardliners in his fleet can't easily accuse him of disrespecting the ways of their ancestors if he's an "ancestor" himself.) Ancestor veneration is also part of why Earth is not considered an Insignificant Little Blue Planet despite its lack of political and economic power — it's where most ancestors lived their lives, and is therefore holy.

  • A Million Is a Statistic: In Relentless, Rione comments that it's easy to end millions or billions of lives, if you're comfortably far away from the world being bombed, and can look at it as a target, not a place where people live and call home.
  • Anguished Declaration of Love: One of Geary's captains and an enemy commander fell in love while the captain was in a prison camp, and were mutually used by their nations intelligence agencies. Once the war is over they're finally free of their use as spies, but duty and suspicion leave little chance they'll ever be together, nevermind the continued monitoring both are subject to. They express as much in communications between each other that Geary has to read or watch (with their knowledge). Rione manages to craft a solution eventually.
  • Anxiety Dreams: Mixed with nightmares.
  • Answers to the Name of God: Black Jack Geary has become something of a demigod to the Alliance. So instead of "If God was my commander" it's "If Black Jack was my commander". Early on someone tries to argue against Geary by using "If Black Jack was here I'm sure he would agree..." He stops once he realizes he's making that argument against the actual Black Jack.
  • Apocalypse How: It is implied that before the event of the book, both sides regularly inflicted varying degrees of widespread planetary destruction. The worst incident is referenced in regard's to Tulev's home planet, which suffered a Planetary Species Extinction.
    • The Syndic Navy opts to collapse the hypernet gate at Lakota to prevent Geary from using it. The resulting shock wave causes a Continental Total Extinction on the side facing the blast, with a Planetary Societal Collapse affecting the survivors.
    • Kalixa suffers a Stellar Total Extinction when the aliens blow its hypernet gate.
    • The fleet nearly gets caught in a trap designed to kill or cripple any ships at a specific point above a planet, which the fleet occupies to pick up POWs. If initiated, it would have cracked the planet, eventually leading to the deaths of most of its inhabitants. Luckily, they manage to stall enough to be able to disable it.
    • The Europa plague is limited to a Planetary Species Extinction only because an insane amount of effort is put into assuring than nothing is permitted to leave the planet. If even one bacterium got off-planet, it could lead to a Galactic Species Extinction.
      • To expand a bit on this, there is a fleet whose sole duty is to enforce the quarantine. Their contingency plan for quarantine being breached is basically "blockade the jump points while we wipe out all life on Earth, Mars and the rest of the Solar System then fly into the sun" to at least try and prevent galactic extermination.
  • Armor-Piercing Question / Armor-Piercing Response: Geary gets a statement that is both of these while interrogating a man involved in the Defender Fleet project.
    Official: We need to keep the enemy from knowing our secrets because if they know what we're doing, they can counter it!
    Geary: You think they don't know? Those software modifications only blocked Alliance sensors. The Syndics knew they had been attacked at Indras, and they could see who was attacking them. The only ones kept in the dark by our secrecy were our own people. Who do you think the enemy is?
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Geary pays a visit to a heavily damaged captured warship:
    Admiral Lagemann: Welcome aboard Invincible, Admiral Geary... I have to confess the ship is not quite ready for inspection. There are a few discrepancies.
    Geary: Oh? Discrepancies?
    Lagemann: All ship systems are nonfunctional. There is extensive unrepaired battle damage in most areas. The ship cannot move under its own power, and in fact has no power except for portable emergency systems. Most of the ship is uninhabitable and requires survival suits or combat armor for access. The crew is a tiny fraction of that necessary for safety, security, and operation. As you can tell, there's no working gravity. And, um, the brightwork hasn't been shined.
    Geary: (jokingly) I can understand the rest, but unshined brightwork? Where are your priorities?
  • Artifact Title: The Lost Fleet ceases to be lost by Relentless. When the title of the series was changed to add "Beyond the Frontier" it happened again when by Invincible the fleet has gone beyond the frontier and come back home. Now it's morphed conceptually, somewhat cut off from a shifting society some members of whom would be glad if the fleet disappeared.
  • Artistic License – Economics: The idea of a government being able to sustain a true 'Total War' economy with anything short of a Soviet-style economic system is dubious at best, and such a focus on military-spending would have to come at the expense of Bread and Circuses for the population. For Free-Market countries, Total Wars rely on significant borrowing from banks and/or selling bonds in order to effectively use the combined savings of their people to pay for the ongoing costs of the war; while there's initially a large lump-sum to be taxed out of one's own people (the backlog of savings from years, decades, or even centuries in the past) after a certain point you only have the money that people are saving right now to take from them. If the government spends more money than it takes it de facto creates new money, which reduces the general value of the currency since there is more of it around. But while limiting military spending to sustainable levels could limit the inflation, this could cause your forces to lose the war. If unchecked then the inflation would eventually result in the general economy of the state breaking down into regional and/or local economies as the means by which things are bought are sold (the currency) becomes worthless and people resort to unofficial ad hoc measures. While you could replace the currency with a new one, the same thing would just happen all over again. This is exactly what happened in Russia in World War One, wherein the huge levels of internal dissent resulting from the Total War Economy caused a military coup and then a Civil War. Later in the same war Germany and Austria-Hungary also imploded in the same manner, and Germany and Japan were on the cusp of doing likewise at the end of WWII as well.
    • It's even worse trying to think about logistics from the Syndicate side of things, which from the Lost Stars series highlights how incredibly inefficient their entire economy was. The Syndicate seemed to constantly be dealing with internal infighting as much as the war - everything from fellow officers killing each other to civil revolts on some worlds. Plus the amount of corruption going on from higher ups that should've detracted from their war effort. Total Wars are usually defined by which side possesses better logistics, and it seems rather clear that the Alliance should've won ages ago given how poor the Syndicate is portrayed at being able to replace their losses.
    • It's explicitly mentioned that both sides were reaching the limits of how long they could sustain a total war economy, and that if the war had gone on a few more years, things would have started falling apart.
      • It's also explicitly stated that there've been ceasefires during the war when both sides had reached their resource limit, allowing both sides to recover before returning to fighting.
      • Fridge Horror / Fridge Brilliance: after baiting the Syndics into an unprovoked attack, how ELSE did the Enigma Race interfere behind the scenes to keep the war going until humanity accidentally genocided themselves?
  • Artistic License – Military: The Alliance seems to lack any flag ranks besides Admiral, as no one is mentioned to ever have ranks equivalent to O-7 through O-9 (Commodore, Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral). Word of God states that this was done for two reasons. The first being that the author had learned from his previous works that too much jargon confused some of his readers - so was done for simplicity's sake. The second being that it represented the degradation of command structure in the Alliance, and the rising egotism of the officer class that put an emphasis on seniority of rank over merit.
    • Geary is promoted from Captain all the way to Fleet Admiral. Even Geary is shocked at this sudden jump, especially since this rank has never been held by anyone in the history of The Alliance. He agrees to accept it with the provision that he will be allowed to be demoted back to Captain after the end of the mission.
    • Also, any commanding officer rescued from the Syndics immediately demands to be given command of a suitable warship based on their seniority. Geary isn't about to remove a capable officer from command just so somebody who was stuck in a labor camp for a decade can play hero.
    • In addition, it appears that instead of having squadron command be a specific position, the seniormost commander in each squadron holds the job by default while also serving as their own flag captain. This makes some sense in the first series, where every officer of flag rank in the fleet is murdered in the first chapter, but this continues into the second series, when there was plenty of opportunities for the Alliance to appoint or promote people to squadron command.
    • On the other side of the fence, the Syndicate structure is also quite baffling. It seems that everyone in a position of power is named a CEO, with a person directly beneath CEO being named a sub-CEO, despite there existing a perfectly serviceable title of COOnote  to tide them over. Considering CEOs run ships, it's never quite explained what's the equivalent of an admiral in Syndic command structure.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Badass Boast: Geary in Valiant when dealing with a Syndic base that won't take back ITS OWN CIVILIANS.
    Geary: Listen, you are going to do what I say, or I will hit your station so hard that the quarks that make up your component atomic particles won't be able to find their way back together. AM I CLEAR?!
    • Chased out of the Lakota system to Ixion, Geary realizes that they don't have time to go anywhere else before Syndic pursuers arrive in a force the Fleet won't be able to defeat. So he orders his ships to immediately turn and jump back to Lakota, where at least they'll be unexpected. When Rione asks him what if there are overwhelming enemy forces still in Lakota, he replies, "I guess that'll be too bad for them." His crew goes wild, cheering.
    • Further quotes just from the first book:
      "I am Captain John Geary. I am now in command of the Alliance fleet. You're dealing with me now. These are my ships. Back off."
      "My name is John Geary. I used to be known as Black Jack Geary a long time ago. I'm in command of this fleet now, and I'm taking it home. Anyone who wishes to try to stop this fleet will have to deal with me."
  • Back from the Brink: The premise of the series.
  • Bad Future: At least for Captain Geary. He went into Survival Sleep after he pulled off a You Shall Not Pass! on a attacking Syndic fleet at the first battle of the Forever War, and wakes up a hundred years later to find out that the war is still going on, he's been made into a larger than life demigod, and he's the only one who still knows tactics.
  • The Bait: the entire fleet in Invincible
  • Bait-and-Switch Tyrant: Some captains resent that he can't save the day without changing anything.
  • Bald of Authority: Orlando, the second in command of the rebellious Syndicate system of Kane in the Corsair comics.
  • Balkanize Me: The fate of the Syndic Worlds after the war. Throughout both the original series and Beyond the Frontier, Geary witnesses four star systems that have declared themselves independent from the Syndic Worlds. Geary even lends a hand to help the system of Midway stay independent. The core Syndic World government is still there, but the power as a whole is splintering.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness: Inverted. The Kicks look like teddy bears but will kill anything other than themselves for fear of predators. While the Dancers are incredibly ugly to humans (and vise-versa) they are rather friendly.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: in the first book Desjani wished they had AI-controlled ships (which ironically the civilian government voted down) to serve as a rearguard. In Beyond the Frontier, when AI-controlled ships do show up it's doubtful that a single soul in the fleet is happy about it after seeing them in action.
  • Believing Their Own Lies: Everything that comes out of Captain Falco's mouth is pure insanity. However, he believes it with every fiber of his being, which is what makes him so charismatic in the eyes of many Alliance sailors.
  • Berserk Button: Under no circumstances do you ever kill POWs while under Geary's command. He doesn't care what's happened in the past hundred years. You do not.
    Geary's control snapped. "I don't care what's been done before! I don't care what our enemies do! I will not allow any prisoners to be massacred by any ship under my command! I will not allow this fleet and the Alliance and the ancestors of all aboard these ships to be dishonored by war crimes committed under the all-seeing eyes of the living stars! We are sailors of the Alliance, and we will hold ourselves to the standards of honor our ancestors believed in! Are there any further questions?"
  • BFG: Geary's fleet gets lured over a planet in a trap designs to destroy a huge amount of his ships. Buried on the planet are a series of particle cannons that are a Wave-Motion Gun Beam Spam attack. When the weapon system is described to Geary, the engineer calls it 'The BFG of all BFGs.' Also, the resulting Earth-Shattering Kaboom would register a Planetary Class 5 on the Apocalypse How scale.
  • Big Damn Heroes: The ending of Relentless. Geary's fleet comes barreling into Varandal, all guns blazing, and prevents the Syndic reserve flotilla from blowing the system's hypernet gate.
  • Binary Suns: In Leviathan, Geary explains to a ground forces general why humans have never gone to binary star systems. Jump points in single-star systems are fairly stable. However, in systems with multiple stars, they constantly appear and fade out due to the fact that the stars' combined gravity field is constantly in flux. Even if a ship manages to enter jump space to a binary star system, there is no guarantee that the exit jump point will be there when the ship arrives, meaning the crew will, most likely, be stuck in jump space forever (or until they go insane). While it is possible to travel there by sublight, it would take 10-15 years using the best human technology and hardly worth the effort. Of course, the same novel where that's described also reveals that a binary star system is the location of the mythical Unity Alternate, a secret reserve base for Alliance higher-ups. Apparently, as soon as Alliance got its hands on hypergate technology, a secret flotilla was dispatched to a binary star system on sublight in order to create a perfect citadel for a government-in-exile, should Unity fall to Syndics. There, the flotilla constructed a secret hypergate, whose coordinates can only be accessed with a special code. Fortunately, jumping from such a system using normal FTL is safer.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The conclusion of Outlands: Implacable. Geary and the fleet finally succeed in forging diplomatic ties with the Dancers against the Enigmas. But multiple Alliance personnel are dead due to General Julian's attempted coup and actions. Worse, there's a possibility — however remote — that Julian's seemingly insane orders (which prompted Geary's fears that they were illegal and set off the coup) may indeed have offically come from the Senate. So when they return to Aliance space, there's a 50/50 possibility Geary will be court-martialed and forced out of the service.
  • Blessed with Suck: In the beginning of the third book, Geary finds that the fleet is seriously short of critical supplies despite recently taking on large quantities of raw materials ... because the selection of raw stocks was based on what would be needed under a commander who got a lot more ships and people killed. The fact that Geary's tactics have kept so many alive means they didn't take on enough of the materials they need; he's got problems because he's doing too good a job.
    • By book 7 Geary has been so good at not getting his ships destroyed that his ships are falling apart; while in his time ships were built to last 50-100 years (150 with an overhaul), by this stage of the war they're designed to last three years at most, and most ships didn't last long enough for that to be an issue anyway.
  • Bling-Bling-BANG!: The Shield of Sol, a group obsessed with form over function. Their ships are extremely gaudy and covered in ornate functionless decorations, while the crew is practically plated in medals. They obviously haven't fought a real war in centuries, and are crushed by Dauntless rather easily despite their superior tonnage and numbers.
  • Bling of War: The Shield of Sol is a group obsessed with form over function. Their ships are extremely gaudy and covered in ornate functionless decorations, while the crew is practically plated in medals. They obviously haven't fought a real war in centuries, and are crushed by Dauntless rather easily despite their superior tonnage and numbers.
    • It's commented that they probably get medals for correctly wearing their medals.
  • Blood Knight: Desjani. Until Geary helps her see the errors of her ways. Not that she shakes off her lust for battle too much.
    She turned a pleading look on Geary. "Now can we blow up something? Just to show him we mean business?"
    "Sorry," he told her. "Not yet."
    "Peace sucks," Desjani grumbled.
    • In Leviathan, Geary suggests naming the debris field created by the battle 'Tanya's Ring'. She loves the idea. No kidding, really loves it.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Two of the three aliens species so far.
    • The enigma aliens, as their name implies, don't even have a real frame of reference to even properly guess what they're thinking. Most of what is gathered later points to a near fanatical adherence to privacy and paranoia, doing whatever they can to try and keep themselves from being studied, fought, or even seen. They go as far as to blow up their ships to prevent them and their crews from being studied.
    • The second species encountered is more easily to figure out, if not to comprehend. The teddy bear-cows or 'Kicks' (Which depending on who is asked, is the correct pronunciation of an acronym that stands for either Killer Cows or Crazy Cows) are herbivores with a herd mentality and view anything else as a mortal threat that can't be negotiated with due to likely deception and desire to eat them, so they don't respond to communications and commit suicide with their brains as soon as they realize they've been captured.
    • The third species is known as the spider-wolves or 'Dancers' and though still very odd, at least communicate with humans and don't kill them on sight and have thought patterns we can relate to. They appear to tend towards viewing things in terms of patterns, as opposed to our binary tendencies.
  • Boarding Party: When Geary tries to capture an alien superbattleship. Also in Tanya Desjani's short story.
  • Boring, but Practical: When confronting Badaya after he screws up during the engagements with the Kicks, Geary recalls being disciplined after he himself messed up a hundred years ago. One officer spent the better part of an hour roaring at him, while the captain of the vessel Geary was serving on simply coldly told him to not do it again. Geary found that the simple, cold warning had a much greater impact on him, and decided to take the same approach with Badaya.
  • Brain Bleach: Captain Duellos invokes the general concept when Desjani says two captains, one quite unsavory, could be in bed together- in the metaphorical sense, but the image gets stuck in his head and he leaves the conversation to take a shower.
  • Brown Note: The Kick superbattleship causes what can be described as the 'heebie jeebies' in humans, hypothesized to be an intentional phenomenon to make the herd animal Kicks feel comfortable. Everyone goes in groups of four or more to stave off the effects. This foils a Syndic commando team when they infiltrate it to blow it up, but due to their single and pair operation they are quickly overwhelmed by the effect.
  • Brick Joke:
    • The fate of Captain Gundel, a lazy and obstructive officer Geary had 'transferred' to conduct a worthless study soon after Gear takes command. He isn't mentioned again until the fleet returns home, where the fleet leaves him behind in Alliance space (and he's still working on a study of the supplies the fleet will need to get back to Alliance space).
    • When they first see the Dancers and are digesting their unpleasant appearance, Charban remarks "at least they don't have tentacles." Later, it is learned that they do have tentacles, as manipulators on the ends of their claw arms.
  • The Bridge: The bridge is located deep inside the ship, although not in the most protected section. That one is reserved for ancestral worship.
  • The Brigadier: Admiral Timbale becomes this, having most of the authority on Ambaru station but not much beyond that. He tries to help Geary as much as he can despite being a pretty much Non-Action Guy authority figure.
  • Bullying a Dragon: After the war, Geary is sent to a Syndic planet to recover Alliance prisoners of war, something the peace treaty between the two nations allows him to do. The Syndic CEO in charge of the planet tries to extort money out of Geary for services rendered for the POWs. Despite the fact that Geary's fleet numbers at over two-hundred ships while the CEO's isn't even in double digits and Geary's reputation for utterly dominating battles is VERY well known by this point. The CEO is banking on the fact that it is Geary himself making demands, and that Geary will be too honorable to do anything violent. This ends with a full ground assault by the marines and with Geary blowing up a dozen or two military installations near the POW camp. Needless to say, the CEO didn't gauge Geary very well.
  • Burial in Space: Dead crew members are sent toward the nearest sun to join their ancestors and become cosmic matter that will eventually form new stars and systems.
    • Also inverted as the penalty for traitors in the Navy: you get buried in jump space, never to come back to the stars. When Geary finds this out, he is reluctant to do this, as he doesn't want to consign anyone (even a traitor) to being cut off from his or her ancestors and the living stars. However, Desjani points out that this is merely symbolic to the living, as it's absurd to think that the ancestors and the living stars wouldn't be able to find someone in jump space.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Discussed with reagards to assumptions regarding aliens in Invincible after making First Contact with the Spider Wolves / Dancers, when Geary, Rione, Charban, and Desjani are trying to figure out if they're potential allies.
  • Call-Back: Boundless makes a number of references to the prequel trilogy, including the names of Robert Geary and Lyn Meltzer, as well as referencing the old Nakamura and Desjani-Ochoa families.
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Subverted (but not Inverted). Senator Costa tells Geary in no uncertain terms that she has the backing of fleet headquarters to take whatever actions are necessary to keep the Alliance together, and that they DON'T need him to do it if he opposes them.
  • The Captain: Desjani, Duellos, Tulev, Cresida, Jane Geary, and to a lesser extent, Badaya are all this. The fleet as a lot of these characters, but the main one is Desjani. Ironically, John Geary never was this, because he was 'posthumously' promoted to captain but immediately ascended to acting as Admiral.
  • Character Development: several cases throughout the series, but Rione and Badaya are the biggest examples.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Geary's first big speech about not committing war crimes. It first serves a purpose in establishing Geary's attitudes about warfare and honor in relation to how far his society has come, so you may be forgiven for forgetting it. It's later used as spontaneous evidence by Rione to convince the Grand Council of Geary's honor again.
    • Geary notices the Fleet Cross ribbon on Desjani's uniform and wonders how she could've possibly earned such a highly distinguished award (which hadn't been given in decades in Geary's time). It comes up every now and again in the books, but the event is never fully explained until Guardian, in a very heartfelt scene.
  • Chest of Medals:
    • The Syndic War has been going for so long and is so violent that even the most junior sailors have several rows of medals indicating participation in numerous campaigns and for exceptional acts in battle. Geary is conspicuous by his lack of such decorations.
    • The forces of the Shield of Sol take this trope to such extremes that apparently low-ranking bridge officers have more medals than most veteran Alliance sailors, while the high-ranking officers take it to a degree that Geary and Desjani consider to be utterly ludicrous. Geary jokes that they must get medals for wearing their other medals correctly.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: An ambiguous example shows up in Boundless. Desjani claims that Geary's grandnephew Michael and grandniece Jane were the last members of the family when Michael disappeared in action. However, Victorious mentions that Michael has three teenaged children. It is possible that Desjani only meant Gearys living in the family home, though, and that Michael’s children live elsewhere.
    • The situation is finally clarified in Resolute: Jane and Michael had both sworn never to have children so that they could end the "Geary Curse", but later on Michael met a woman and fell in love. He married her under an alias so that his kids wouldn't be stuck with the Geary name, only for his wife to die while he was away on campaign. Since his alias returned no matches in the fleet's personnel records, everyone assumed he was another two-timing sailor, and he left it at that so his kids wouldn't discover their lineage and feel pressured to join the fleet. It's even worse now that John Geary has returned and actually saved the Alliance. Now Michael fears that his kids might join the fleet because they want to.
  • Clueless Chick-Magnet: John Geary may know all there is to know about commanding women as soldiers in battle but he breaks whole new ground in cluelessness over how to read - and deal - with them romantically.
  • Colon Cancer: After the first series finishes, two sub series start. Starting with Dreadnaught: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier.
  • Comically Small Bribe: There's not much the Marines won't do for free beer, although this is more pronounced in the Corsair comics.
  • Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: Explicitly averted. Due to certain prior incidents where sailors had been lost for years before their escape pods were found, the Alliance Navy added a regulation stating that time in survival sleep does not count towards the accumulation of pay, leave time, or completion of one's term of enlistment, so Geary's century of sleep does not entitle him to a king's ransom in back pay, several years paid vacation, and a retirement with full pension. Between that and the fact that the bank accounts in which he stored his pre-war savings having been long since emptied and closed, he's actually quite poor. However, the Navy forgot to add a clause in that reg about seniority in grade, which is why Geary is the highest ranking officer in the fleet after the flag officers are all murdered.
  • Control Freak: An initially justified tendency of Geary is to micromanage his ship and task force commanders. For good reason, he can't rely on them at first to properly execute his plans on their own. Later, once reliable and intelligent commanders are put in place he's still doing it and needs Rione to call him out when he nearly overwhelmed trying to direct a complex battle on his own instead of trusting his officers.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Most of the power structure for the Syndics are these, to the point higher officers in their fleet are various ranks of CEO. Any executive with a hint of conscience or independent thought tends to get exiled to a backwater or assassinated, meaning the top ranks are filled with scheming, self-centered sociopaths.
  • Covers Always Lie: For some reason the publishers felt it necessary to put Geary in armor holding a BFG while posing in some exotic location even if such a scene has never appeared in any of the books to date. Heck, until Victorious he doesn't even leave the Dauntless, and then for a space station. It took until the Beyond the Frontier series for him to finally set foot on a planet — a friendly one, where the biggest danger was hordes of adoring fans, and that only got described in a flashback - he didn't set foot on a planet during a book until two novels later. Lampshaded in Invincible, when Geary and Desjani are talking about her writing a tell-all book about him if he dies and she jokes that it will have a misleading cover of him doing something he never did, like wearing armor and striking a heroic pose with a gun.
    • Averted on the British editions which actually had individual space ships hanging in space. Still a case of this, as the ships on those covers are blocky and rigid, where as the ships in the series are more smooth and sharklike.
    • The cover of Steadfast almost gets it right, since he did indeed stand in front of Stonehenge, but without the armor and gun depicted.
    • The Leviathan cover (which, incidently, is the current page image for the series) is surprisingly accurate, given the rest of the series. The Dancers' ovoid ships, along with sharklike Dark Ships and several Alliance Fleet vessels are present. However, one Dark Ship appears to be firing on another Dark Ship, everyone is far too visible for a series where combat usually takes place at decent fractions of the speed of light, and Geary is observing from a big bay window instead of the bridge buried deep in the hull.
    • Averted by the Chinese cover of Fearless as seen here. It depicts a battle from the book, specifically the Battle of Sutrah, and the destruction of Syndic defenses on the planet's moons. The ships even match the smooth and sharklike descriptions given.
  • Crazy Enough to Work:
    • Geary and his fleet have just been chased out of the Lakota system after a Syndic fleet unexpectedly came in via the hyperspace gate. His forces were badly battered and several of his ships were forced to make a Last Stand in order for the majority of his fleet to escape. When he exits, he has a couple of options for which jump point to take next, knowing that the overwhelming Syndic fleet is right behind him. What does he do? HE GOES BACK TO LAKOTA!
    • Geary's plan to 'charge' the missile swarm of a species just encountered (the missiles being piloted they're so massive), and tell ships to maneuver independently.
    • Realizing their formation is about to be destroyed by the enemy Armada, Captain (Jane) Geary takes command of all the Battleships in the group and has them charge the enemy. She desperately orders them to fire all the kinetic bombardment rounds they can, projectiles which are never used against ships because they're so easy to avoid... and the enemy doesn't avoid them, blowing a hole big enough in the enemy to get through.
    • In Resolute, Geary realizes that an Enigma fleet will be waiting for them as soon as they come out from the jump in the next system. So, just before entering jump space, he has Desjani and Lieutenant "Shamrock" Jamenson come up with a new confusing set of maneuvers for the entire fleet to be executed immediately upon exiting the jump. Each ship will maneuver independently but following its preprogrammed course, with the whole thing appearing like a jumbled mess to any outside observer. It ends up working like a charm, and the waiting Enigmas (with their own versions of battleships) have trouble finding good attack vectors in order to strike at the vulnerable ships of the fleet. Those that do try to navigate the confusing mess end up being torn to shreds.
  • Cut-and-Paste Suburb: Well, Planet, actually. The bear-cows have razed the ecology of their entire planet and set up housing that's identical to each other.
  • Cute as a Bouncing Betty: While extracting POWs from a prison camp (and covering the guards and their families in a cease fire agreement) in the fifth book, stealthed commandos are spotted approaching, carrying 'hupnums'. When Geary asks for elaboration while musing to himself that they sound like a cute fairy tale creature, Colonel Caribali clarifies it as 'Human Portable Nuclear Munitions'- and though they allegedly have timers, the Alliance had them too and no one who trained with them, including the instructors, thought the timers were real. So basically, stealthed nuclear suicide bomber commandos.
  • Dead Guy Junior: Not yet, but Desjani made Geary agree that should they ever have a daughter she be named after Jaylen Cresida, who fell in the final battle getting the fleet home.
  • Deadly Dodging: Geary involves the entire fleet in this in escaping the Bear Cow home system, involving both the enemy fleet and their space station blocking the jump point out
  • Death Glare: Geary apparently possesses one capable of silencing the most fractious of his captains.
    • Tanya has developed one for Geary.
  • Decadent Court: The Syndicate is rife with political assassination, character assassination, hostile takeovers (of planets and businesses), and nepotism. Any executive with a conscience tends to end up exiled to a backwater while those without maintain control of the populace through fear.
  • Democracy Is Flawed: Geary constantly fights against the idea of being made dictator of the Alliance, firmly believing that democratic rule needs to be maintained. The democratically elected government of the Alliance is horrifically flawed however, something Geary is perfectly aware of. The books have shown it to be filled with self-serving politicians who look out for themselves, are more interested in petty power struggles, or simply make promises that they can't deliver on. This is without getting into how they approach Geary and the rest of the fleet after the war is over and they're concerned the fleet may be more loyal to Geary than the leaders of the Alliance. Despite all of this, Geary still thinks overthrowing the government and becoming dictator is a terrible idea, even if there is enough popular support among the people for him to get away with it. It helps that there ARE senators in the Alliance that genuinely try to make things better for the average person, just not as many as some would like.
  • Despair Event Horizon: If the Europa quarantine is broken and the plague gets loose on Old Earth, the quarantine fleet would need to expand their zone to the entire system, destroy every ship attempting to flee Sol, and then hurtle themselves into the sun. Just thinking about it almost provokes this from Commander Nkosi, which prompts him to go along with Geary's plan.
  • Dirty Business: As the series progresses, Geary finds it's sometimes necessary to commit small acts that leave him feeling tainted. This includes reading a personal letter to his subordinate due to its sender being a spy, and allowing his Marines to lie to a man they're about to kill.
    • A big problem for both sides of the war was that they gradually became numbed to this sort of thing. What they consider expedient, Geary finds monstrous. And to make it worse, most of those "harsh but necessary" actions didn't make any difference in the war, thus proving that they weren't really necessary at all.
  • Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Whenever Geary is reminded of just how harsh Tanya's life and career has been, she'll immediately notice and tell him not to pity her.
  • Doomed Hometown: Captain Tulev's homeworld of Elyzia was bombarded until nothing was left on the surface, including his family. The only ones still on the planet are a bunch of holdouts manning the defenses in case the Syndics come back.
  • Double Entendre: Desjani tells Badaya that she and Geary were quite busy doing a lot of political manuevering while on their supposed honeymoon. Badaya naturally doesn't get it.
  • Dreaming of Things to Come: Desjani had a dream about Geary when he was in Survival sleep. That's why she believed that he was sent by the Living Stars long before he kept pulling off miracle after miracle.
  • Driven to Suicide: A common fate for people who have mental blocks placed on them. The blocks invariably cause psychological damage, which can't be repaired, because the blocks invariably include a block that prevents the subject from telling anyone who could potentially help them that they have a block messing with their mind, so the damage just keeps getting worse until their mind breaks. One Alliance doctor bitterly speculates that this is how the Alliance kills people who have secrets they need buried while still officially keeping their hands clean. The Syndics just shoot people, which is more obviously immoral, but doesn't put them through years of untreatable mental torment.
  • Duct Tape for Everything: Humanity has developed technology to travel across the stars, but still heavily relies on duct tape. In one scene, sailors in an escape pod are depicted using it to seal leaks and as emergency bandages. Indeed, the Universal Fixing Substance, turns out to be a key to finally making friends with an alien race.
  • Duel to the Death: For a brief while, duels came into vogue with Alliance officers as means of settling disputes. The number of deaths from duels was ridiculous until the fleet finally made issuing a challenge punishable by death.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Rione. in Leviathan. In Courageous, although it does turn out to be a Senseless Sacrifice, Paladin inflicts some severe damage on the Syndicate fleet while attempting to rescue a damaged ship.
    Desjani: Captain Midea is crazy, but she's dying well.
  • Dying Town: When the Alliance and the Syndics set up their hypernets, many systems were left out because the only reason to go there had been as a waypoint to somewhere else via the jump points, and hypernet bypasses this. Some of these systems, where there weren't enough resources for survival without trade, have become Ghost Planets; the Alliance fleet rescues the last 500-some humans from a Syndic world where their employers had left them and their families to die forty years before.

    Tropes E - N 
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • In the first book, Geary mentions the Third Frigate Squadron. Frigates are never mentioned again after that, and it seems like destroyers become the smallest vessels in the fleet.
    • In the first series, Geary mentions that he has no family estate, or at least didn't when he went into cryo. Fast forward to the third series, when he takes Tanya to Glenyon for their second honeymoon, and he shows her the family estate, which dates back to when the Gearys were first-generation settlers of the planet (A Call-Back to the Genesis Fleet series). A detail about said estate later gets used as a Trust Password to confirm that the Captain of a certain Syndic battlecruiser is really Michael Geary.
  • Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The Continental Shotgun uses deeply buried high-yield nukes to make an enormous bomb-pumped laser. It is the biggest BFG in all of history, but can only be installed on planets that you don't intend to use for anything else... ever.
  • Earth That Used to Be Better: When at one point Geary visits Earth, we learn that it is an economically unimportant backwater, still divided into nation-states, and damaged by everything from climate change to overpopulation to orbital bombardment. Repairs are underway, however, and when they are initially dismayed at the cemetery-like decaying desert landscape of Kansas, it is pointed out that native plants are coming back. As far as the rest of humanity and their ancestor-worshipping religion is concerned, of course, it is the holy of holies.
  • Easy Evangelism: Averted. It takes a long time for Geary to convince the fleet to drop Glory Hound attitudes and Death or Glory Attack patterns. Even when his more sensible maneuvers cause the fleet to win overwhelming victories, large amounts of his sailors are noticeably unhappy. Things do get better as time goes on, but even then a hundred years of tradition don't just get forgotten. Geary still has to word his orders in ways that don't hurt the pride of his officers (usually by rephrasing orders to retreat into orders that sound better). And even in Steadfast, the tenth book in the series, one of his cruisers disobeys orders in an attempt to rack up an easy kill when Geary had ordered it to scout an area and then fall back. It is promptly outflanked and destroyed, all hands lost.
  • Easy Logistics: Averted. The fast fleet auxiliaries are capable of producing fuel, munitions and spare parts for the fleet, but they have to stop to find raw materials the auxiliaries need to make those things after roughly every other battle, and the fact that there's only one squadron of them and a whole lot of ships in the fleet means that the fleet still tends to use supplies faster than the auxiliaries can replace them. Not helping is the fact that the logistics software that determines what raw materials are required is woefully unprepared for Geary's ability to not lose ships as fast as it expects.
  • The Empire: Although they fill this role, the Syndicate Worlds are themselves a huge union of various interstellar mega-corps.
  • Enemy Civil War: During the final battle with the Syndics, their leadership breaks into three factions: The original civilian leadership, a second, self-appointed civilian leadership who object to the first group's trying to blow up the hypernet gate and destroy the entire system while they run away, and a fleet commander who thinks he can exploit the chaos to take control of the Syndicate Worlds for himself. Geary and his fleet play kingmaker in favor of the second group, who had indicated a willingness to negotiate a peace treaty.
  • Enemy Within: In a way. Around book three, Geary's thoughts are starting to tell him to do things he wouldn't otherwise, since he could get away with it. He and Madame Co-President Rione call those thoughts 'Black Jack' Geary.
  • Escape Pod: If a ship isn't immediately destroyed by enemy fire (either by core overload or complete obliteration), the crew is likely to be able to make it to escape pods fairly quickly. Interestingly, it's never brought up that it would be very difficult for another ship to get those pods, as they would still be traveling at about 10% of the speed of light when ejecting from the ship (this is the standard maneuvering speed of ships). Any ship trying to recover the pods would have to accelerate to a faster speed just to catch up, and at that point they would have trouble accurately detecting the pods due to relativistic distortions. Though this is probably why they usually send off destroyers, which can accelerate the fastest of any ship, to run down errant escape pods.
    • Actually, relativistic distortions have to do with _relative_ speeds. Matching speeds with the escape pods would be fine, and the ships (especially the destroyers they use to get escape pods) have plenty of spare fuel to accelerate to 20% relative speed with the opposing fleet in a jousting match multiple times over. It's all rather well thought out.
  • Evil Knockoff: The Syndics attempt to duplicate Geary's improvised ship minefield, unsuccessfully.
  • Expy: Geary (both in his personality and situation) seems to be somewhat based on Steve Rogers.
    • He's also something of an expy of George Washington, who fought a war against long odds and then refused to take up dictatorial power after he'd won.
    • When Geary, Rione, Charban, and Desjani visit Hadrian's Wall in Steadfast, one of the locals notes that he's very similar to King Arthur.
  • Face Palm: Geary does this a lot, usually when brought up against the modern fleet mindset. Most often the 'massage bridge of nose' version but rarely the full on 'bury face in hands'.
  • Fake Defector: Mentioned posthumously. The guy that gave the Alliance the Syndic hypernet key so they could fall right into a trap; he was killed as soon as the Alliance commander realized it was a trap. Although it's suggested that the defector might have been tricked, not treacherous.
  • Fearless Fool: Geary discusses the trope with his niece Jane after the Battle of Honor.
  • Field Promotion: This occurs frequently throughout the original series, with all the deaths and arrests happening.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: The captain of the Diamond after they stood against the hyperspace gate.
  • First Girl Wins: Desjani. See Love Triangle below.
  • Fish out of Temporal Water: Geary. By most of a century.
  • Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Some capital ships have a weapon called a "null field" that is projected from the front of the ship. Unlike most of this type of weapon, it's very short-ranged (for a space weapon), but tends to be an One-Hit Kill as it just disintegrates a large chunk out of whatever ship it hits and breaks down most shields.
  • Flanderization: John "Black Jack" Geary is someone who has to deal with his historical reputation being struck by this. He's been exaggerated and twisted into someone who had no other mode than Attack! Attack! Attack! with no real tactics or mercy. Also, a Invincible Hero who could do no wrong with his actions.
  • Flaunting Your Fleets: When Geary encounters the Dancers' beautiful fleet formation, he orders his fleet to assume a ceremonial formation to better present themselves.
    • The Shield of Sol ships constantly fly in ceremonial formation - even in the midst of battle.
  • Food Pills: For food, the Alliance fleet relies on nutritional bars of varying flavors and dubious quality. They later discover that Syndics also eat similar bars but that those are even worse than what they're used to.
  • Forever War: The war in The Lost Fleet has been going on for over a hundred years between the evenly matched Alliance and Syndicate Worlds. For the Alliance it's a simple matter of "They attacked us first!" For the Syndics, well... it seems likely they were hoping to wipe out the Alliance with the help of the alien enigma race - but for one reason or another, they ended up attacking alone and were unable to strike a decisive blow against the Alliance, resulting in a stalemate. Not that they'll ever admit that.
  • Four-Star Badass: John Geary, who commands the Alliance fleet through a string of heavily lopsided victories and on a few times barely scraping by in his own ship. Also, Carabali, who was a Colonel Badass but got promoted to major general.
  • Fragile Speedster:
    • Battle cruisers have some of the highest acceleration in the fleet but this is thanks to being more lightly armored than other ships.
    • The enigma ships are nowhere near as powerful as human ships, but compensate by being much faster and more maneuverable. It reflects the overall combat doctrine of the species, preferring trickery and knives in the back to full frontal assaults.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Pretty much a running gag in Invincible.
  • Future Imperfect: There's a lot of misconception about the past in Lost Fleet. Geary's desperate Last Stand being blown out of proportion is the most obvious one, but a lot of it existed in Geary's time too. When talking to another officer about old seagoing navies, Geary doesn't understand why it would be a problem if they went under the water, thinking that they would be pressurized the way spacefaring ships are. The other officer is much more informed on the subject than he is, although even he can't remember the word "submarine".
  • General Ripper: Pretty much every Alliance officer that doesn't undergo some form of character development. Implacable gives us General Arnold Julian of the ground forces. He previously distinguished himself during the war with the Syndics by using We Have Reserves tactics. And then he arrives with reinforcements to deliver new orders that place him in command of all space beyond Midway. Julian intends to force Midway and the Dancers to submit to the Alliance. When Geary points out that the Dancers, the Taon, and the Wooareek have more advanced technology than the Alliance (the Wooareek in particular have tech so advanced that even the best Alliance scientists have no idea how it could possibly work), Julian brushes him away, going back to the old claim that human "fighting spirit" will prevail no matter what. When Geary refuses to follow orders he believes are suspect, Julian unintentionally gets the vast majority of the fleet on his side. He then sends his own ships to attack Alliance vessels, causing them to turn against him too. Finally, when his own flagship's crew comes to request that the ship join Geary's fleet, Julian sends his thugs to shoot them. Even his own loyal Captain Rogov at this point realizes just how unhinged Julian is.
  • Gender Is No Object: All of human society seems to be completely gender-equal at this point in the future, at every level of society, government, and the military, both in the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds.
  • Genghis Gambit: Without the threat of Alliance attacks to keep the populace in line, the Syndicate Worlds start falling apart after the war. The new Executive Council tries to engineer another war by harassing the fleet while it returns from the expedition but ultimately fails.
  • Genius Bruiser: Jaylen Cresida. In addition to being the commander (later captain) of the battlecruiser Furious, a ship only given to those who have proven themselves to be aggressive in battle, she is among the first to abandon the Alliance's Honor Before Reason tactics. In Fearless, Geary gives her the command of a distraction force. After the initial skirmish with Syndic forces, she circles back to face them again, and Geary is worried that she might be falling back into old habits by charging them head on. She instead ducks underneath the enemy formation at the last second, blowing the hell out of a Syndic battleship. But what truly makes her this trope is her work with the hypernet gates. Singlehandedly, she was able to discover the process by which a gate collapse could be mitigated or prevented altogether. In a latter book in the series, another captain remarks that Cresida was the only person in the fleet who could have done such a thing.
  • Genre Shift: In a manner of speaking, and much smaller than usual. The series starts out as fleet battle focused series on a long spanning human war, then slowly shifts to the consequences of first contact with aliens and how to deal with their technology and ideologies. Then the series shifts to the consequences of an attempt to build an AI-controlled fleet with predictable results.
  • Ghost Ship: Any human who goes aboard the captured Kick superbattleship gets an extremely creepy feeling of being surrounded by the ghosts of the dead Kick crew. The feeling only increases the longer one spends aboard the ship. The only way to counter the panic is to stay in groups. This also helps to keep the ship out of Syndic hands, whose boarding parties try to capture the ship, only to run away in terror. As the Dancers later reveal, the effect is intentional, but not to keep humans out but to keep isolated Kicks comfortable, as they are used to being in close proximity to others of their kind and feel alone and exposed otherwise.
  • Ghost Town: The hypernet is effectively an interstellar freeway system, providing shorter routes and faster travel speeds than the jump points. As a result, systems that aren't on the hypernet slowly decline in importance, similar to how modern communities with no easy access to a highway can slowly decline into irrelevance. In the first book Geary takes the fleet to a system that is one jump away from two different hypernet-connected systems, and its defense force consists of a light cruiser and two corvettes of a class that was obsolete before Geary went into cryo. In the fourth book, Geary finds a system that is so thoroughly abandoned that the Syndic leadership decided it would be cheaper to let the last few hundred people starve to death than to send ships to resupply them or even move them somewhere else.
  • Glory Hound: Captain Falco makes himself out to be the hero of the Alliance even though this victories are all but indistinguishable from his defeats.
  • Godzilla Threshold: At the end of Leviathan, the First Fleet finds itself trapped at Unity Alternate and facing the dark ship fleet, which has just activated a doomsday protocol which will spell the end of the Alliance. Each dark ship is individually superior to its manned counterparts, and the dark ships are brand new, whereas the First Fleet is badly degraded by accumulated combat damage and aging systems. Geary realizes he will have to fight a battle of attrition, trading ship for ship until both fleets are wiped out. Then Rione goes him one better by deliberately using the system's hypernet gate to trigger a nova-scale explosion, obliterating the dark ships and killing herself in the process.
    • Invoked again in Implacable, when Geary is presented with a set of orders supposedly from the Alliance Senate that would pit his fleet against the Dancers, Taon, and Wooareek, all of whom are more technologically advanced than humanity and could most likely wipe his fleet out by themselves, let alone if they joined forces. Moreover, the orders state that Midway Star System and any Alliance client states that protest the new state of affairs are to be forcibly occupied and subdued. In response, Geary invokes Article 16 of the Alliance fleet code, which states that any officer who believes their orders to have been issued in error is authorized to question the legitimacy of those orders and even disobey them until they can be properly verified with the issuing authority. It's such an extreme step that even some of his most loyal officers are concerned that Geary has finally gone too far, at least until the general who brought them starts making open threats and relieving his own commanders for pointing out the inconsistencies in his story.
  • Go Mad from the Isolation: Several of the rescued prisoners show a touch of this.
  • Gone Horribly Right: The Europa plague, the result of an attempt to create an undetectable bioweapon, which succeeded so well that the designers were unable to detect it when it escaped containment and infected them. It wiped out the entire population of the moon, and centuries later there is still a dedicated fleet whose sole purpose is to ensure that nothing lands on or leaves Europa.
  • Good Is Old-Fashioned: Geary's old-fashioned principles and phrasings get more respect than usual in this trope.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In-universe example: While eating ration bars, Geary notes that one brand was used as far back as his original tour of duty. He relates a joke from back then about its tastelessness, stating that they should have traded the bars with the Syndics, but didn't for fear that they would start a war. Geary at least manages to cut it off before getting to the punchline once he realizes that present circumstances make it a little less funny. But it's still probably funny to the reader.
    • Even worse: We find out that the Syndics' version of the emergency ration bars are even worse. They'd have been glad to have rations that good.
      • In The Lost Stars, it is revealed that some Syndics have tried Danaka Yoruk bars that were taken from captured Alliance soldiers, and they prefer their own rations.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Rione has a bad case of this towards Desjani over Geary's affections in Valiant, to the point of making jabs at Desjani while sitting in Desjani's command bridge.
  • Herbivores Are Friendly: Inverted with extreme prejudice. The plant-eating Kicks have a hat of Omnicidal Maniac, even to the point where propaganda about destroying aliens is apparently their entire entertainment industry. By contrast, the obviously predatory Dancers are the only species in setting that even attempts to communicate peaceably with humans, and their oddly patronizing attitude turns out to be due to a persistent translation error they think is deliberately patronizing.
  • Her Heart Will Go On: Discussed
  • Heroic BSoD: Not who you think. Captain Falco has one resulting from the first time he's in battle after spending twenty years in a Syndic labor camp. He got forty ships to mutiny with him, and then his incompetence got most of them destroyed. Afterward, he's completely separated from reality and giving meaningless orders like Hitler did in the final days of World War II.
    • Geary initially has this when he's pulled out of his escape pod 100 years after he was thought to have died, and realizes everyone he's ever known and loved is long dead.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Victoria Rione pulls that off in Leviathan, much to Desjani's surprise and annoyance, managing to take out the remaining dark ships in the process.
  • Hidden Depths: Captains Badaya and Armus, once Geary wins them over to his way of thinking. One of the screw ups a young Geary is assigned to lead in the short story Shore Patrol, does try hard but is just bad at it, while another expresses a desire to see Earth the next time a battlecruiser is sent on the ceremonial visit and seems receptive when Geary reminds him that he'd need a good record to hope for a transfer like that. Even Captain [[spoiler: Casia], despite being his role as an antagonist, is prepared to Face Death with Dignity.
  • Hidden Villain: What the 'Beyond the Frontier' sequel series is setting up as its arc. Geary has to figure out how to keep the Alliance together in the midst of so many people with hidden agendas working behind the scenes. It's implied that Admiral Bloch could be this, with backing from another source to provide him with a fleet. The Alliance Grand Council seems to be his backer.
    • The Dark Ships fit this to a T. They're uncrewed and probably under the command of Bloch.
  • Higher-Tech Species: Every alien species in the series can do at least one thing better than humanity. The enigmas (possibly) created hypernet technology, have stealth fields over their cities that no human technology can see through, and have developed quantum-level software worms than no one could detect until Jaylen Cresida had a "Eureka!" Moment. Even then, she still notes that she has no idea how the worms work, only how to disable them. The Dancers are all-around better engineers; their ship designs are enough to send Captain Smythe into fits of geeky bliss, their software can instantly adapt to human systems, and they have jump drives with much longer range. The Kicks can build massive superbattleships capable of fighting an entire human battleship division by themselves and multiple Death-Star-sized battle stations to defend their space. The Taons' warships are individually superior to their human equivalents, with more powerful weapons, shields, and engines. Finally, there's the squid-like Wooareek, whose ships are able to accelerate to half the speed of light instantly and slow down just as fast without any ill effects. They're even able to bring human ships along with them. Their jump drives are twice as fast as human ones. It's speculated that their tech is at least a thousand years ahead of humanity's, and they seem to be the most advanced species in that part of the galaxy.
  • Hold the Line: This is how the bear-cows fight. Being evolved from herd animals, they value the herd above the individual. Many intercepted entertainment videos show bear-cow formations similar to Greek phalanxes steadfastly holding against the enemy onslaught. It's mentioned that they could've given the Spartans a lesson in holding the line. Bear-cow entertainment also conspicuously lacks any notion of individual heroics. Outnumbering the opponent is how the bear-cows win.
    • In Leviathan, Geary realizes that his fleet has to destroy all or, at least, most dark ships to keep them from laying waste to any major Alliance star system they come across as part of their "Armageddon Option". This means he can't leave and must instead resort to the kind of warfare he has always abhorred: a war of attrition. He has to trade ship for ship in order to make sure that there were no more enemy ships left to keep the Alliance safe. Many ships and sailors lose their lives in the fight, including Captain Tulev, and the total loss of the fleet is prevented only through Victoria Rione's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Hold Your Hippogriffs: There are a number of phrases used invoking Geary's name, usually in a similar context to phrases like "God himself could not..." or "Only God could...." Needless to say, Geary hates every one of them. They'll probably amuse the reader though.
    Captain Michael Geary: "I assure you I will carry out my duties as if Black Jack Geary himself were my commander."
    Captain John Geary: "Tell me that's not a common phrase." It is.
  • Hollywood Tactics: The Alliance fleet subscribes to this battle style right up to the beginning of the series. Averted by Captain Geary, which is the only reason everyone isn't dead. When Geary reports to the Senate, an admiral has the gall to claim that Geary must be lying about his victories, because:
    "Our ancestors knew the secret of winning, all-out attack, with every captain competing to see who could display the most valor and strike the enemy first and hardest. These victories we're being told about violate those principles! They cannot be true, not if we honor our ancestors."
    Geary stared at Otropa in disbelief....
  • Home Sweet Home: Admiral Lagemann is very much looking forward to seeing home again after seventeen years as a Syndic prisoner.
  • Honor Before Reason: A literal code of Death Before Dishonor is promoted by the Alliance to encourage its progressively greener conscripts to fight on through the stalemate. At the rate both sides are chewing through new recruits, this is probably the best conditioning they can give the fresh meat in preparation for combat. Geary has a very low opinion of this. Geary has to deal not only with the Syndics, aliens, and traitors, but also the very ingrained belief his subordinates have in this. It very painfully costs some people their lives.
    Falco [Quoting Napoleon, probably unknowingly, and almost certainly out of context]: "The moral is to the material as three is to one."
    • Geary starts giving captains interesting interpretations of any orders that don't involve a full offensive in order to ensure that they follow them rather than ignore them in favor of an all out attack. Good examples are referring to a retreat as repositioning to attack from a different direction or getting damaged ships to stay out of a fight by personally tasking them with defending the fleet auxiliaries.
    • A number of rescued POWs believe that since they are senior to officers in the fleet that rescued them, they are naturally entitled to a command in that fleet—in one case, command of the fleet itself— ignoring any concerns about the fact that they haven't commanded anything for years, this would involve relieving current ship commanders without cause, or the disruption this would have in the fleet's command structures. Especially as Geary has been spending months retraining his officers to operate as a fleet rather than a pack of individual glory hounds.
  • Hopeless War: Besides the main Forever War, the Syndicate Worlds have been engaged in a second, hopeless series of skirmishes with the Enigma Race. Whenever they try to sneak ships or individual soldiers in spacesuits or hollowed out asteroids into Enigma territory for warfare or reconnaissance, they get destroyed or forced to retreat almost immediately. Sensors left behind on abandoned worlds never return any data. The war with the Alliance keeps them from diverting many military assets against the Enigmas, and whenever they do fight, the Syndics get wiped out without inflicting any casualties upon the enemy. This is explained by the fact that the Enigmas have hacked into the Syndics' computers, accessing their battle plans and sending them false images so that they shoot at empty areas of space during battles.
  • Hufflepuff House:
    • There are six human interplanetary organizations featured in the series. The heroes belong to The Alliance and are engaged in a Forever War with the Syndicate Worlds. The Sol System is the birthplace of humanity and plays a prominent role in two books, one of which has the Alliance repel the Covenant of First Stars, which is pressing the Sol System. The other two factions, the Callas Republic and the Rift Federation, are allied with the Alliance but are treated as more of an extension of them. Very little is revealed about them, even though a Callas Republic politician is the tritagonist of the series. By the time of the later books, the two governments are painfully aware of their Hufflepuff status, are chafing under it and are struggling to assert themselves as independent powers.
    • Geary's battle cruisers, battleships, scout battleships, and auxiliaries get a fair amount of attention, but the assault transport, destroyer, heavy cruiser, and light cruiser squadrons are mostly just there to take up space and perform the occasional minor specialized function that the other ships are too big to do. The light cruiser and assault transport squadrons each only have one commander who actually gets a name (although both get some focus).
    • Of the four branches of the Alliance military, the aerospace forces are the smallest and least important. The Navy and the Alliance Marines are highly prominent throughout every book, and while the presence of the Marines keeps the protagonist from encountering too many ground forces troops, that branch has a few prominent characters who appear in the sequel series (such as General Charban, Colonel Webb, General Sissons, and General Julian). The aerospace fighter pilots, on the other hand, have only been represented by a few Spear Carriers amongst liberated POW and the Varandal security forces, and the Mauve Shirt Astrida System defense squadron from Steadfast.
  • Human Popsicle: What Captain Geary is before he is found by the alliance fleet. For 100 years at that.
  • Humans Are White: Averted, or rather dodged, in that neither skin nor hair nor eye color are ever mentioned in the novels.
    • Used on the book covers, which always portray Geary as a European, and often a blond one at that. Granted, his name does suggest British descent.
    • Dreadnaught finally specified someone's hair color: green (due to genetic engineering). She's from the colony world Éire. Given the choice of name, they might well be more ethnically European than not. That officer's nickname is "Shamrock", which further indicates who colonized Éire. It's not surprising that the audiobook narrator chose to give her a typical "Oirish" accent.
    • The comic series also averts this, with a variety of skin tones and hair colors visible.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: When the aliens finally land at Kansas, Geary and the others learn it was because they were returning a perfectly preserved human corpse to his home. Senator Suva breaks down crying, because she believes humans would not have acted as honorably if the roles were reversed.
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick: Commander Lommand to Captain Tyrosian. The latter gives a solid performance for her job but sometimes shows her New Meat nature (such as with the situation under this page's Blessed with Suck entry, caused by her not taking into account that the fleet maneuvers more and takes fewer casualties compared to before), while the former is creative, with a lot of initiative and has covered his captain's mistake at least once.
  • Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Prolonged jumps have a detrimental effect on the human psyche. Most jumps aren't enough to affect people that badly, plus human jump tech isn't advanced enough to allow for very long jumps. In Implacable, various human polities get access to enhanced jump tech that allows for month-long jumps, which is perfect to bypass Enigma space from the Midway system on the way to the Dancers. It's speculated that it was the Enigmas who covertly gave the tech to humanity in order to keep humans out of their space. Unfortunately, any human who attempts such a jump begins to suffer from Severe Jump Space Syndrome, making them paranoid and amplifying their personality qualities. The Syndic flotilla that undertakes the jump ends up attacking their Dancer escort and then the Alliance fleet. And that's after many of their crewmembers die from infighting. Later, a civilian ship arrives from Alliance space, whose crew and passengers are likewise suffering from the syndrome. The corporate executive in charge of the ship ends up blowing it up when Alliance marines board the ship to rescue civilians. Luckily, the marines manage to make it out before the core blows, but two-thirds of the passengers are dead.
  • Hyperspace Lanes: In effect, although a more effective portal network is set up in important systems and the FTL pathways are almost forgotten about until the events of the series.
  • Iconic Sequel Character:
    • Captain Badaya and Jane Geary both end up being among the most prominent captains in the fleet, and both get more Character Development than some of the other major characters, but they take until books three and five to debut.
    • Gwen Iceni first appears late in book six before becoming one of the main characters of The Lost Stars.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every book is a One-Word Title named after a ship that appears in that book.
  • I Gave My Word: Geary. To the point where even near the end, the Syndics would only trust his word, and his alone.
  • Ignored Epiphany: Senator Costa and Suva, both of whom seemed really emotional about what the Dancers did at Old Earth, vow to be better humans... and then seem to immediately slip into the plans they'd already put forth before the epiphany. Geary reasons they might change in the future though.
  • I Know You Know I Know: In the final battle with the dark ships at Unity Alternate in Leviathan, Geary essentially has to pull this on himself. The reason for this is that the A.I. running the dark ships is based on the public's perception of Geary via the "Black Jack" legend, which is still close enough to the truth to make this work.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: Used in Black Humor way to alleviate tension when the fleet suspects the enigma race is going to blow up a hypernet gate to destroy them. Geary and Desjani talk about how they would get the lowest ranks first in case of shipwreck and then ask the watchstanders which on of them has lower seniority. Then they talk about how an ensign could be reassigned to the watch section as "emergency rations".
  • I'm Cold... So Cold...: Inverted. Geary feels this trope when he is first revived from 100 years of survival sleep.
  • I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: Geary outright says he's not a hero, and he's tired of everyone treating him like one. But he's not just the Humble Hero, he genuinely dislikes the unwavering trust everyone puts into him, especially Desjani, because he can't live up to the impossible standard of his legend. Though as Rione points out he comes about as close as mortal flesh possibly could.
  • Inappropriately Close Comrades: It's noted that Victoria Rione, a civilian politician, is the only person in John Geary's fleet that he could legitimately have a relationship with, since everyone else is part of his command. Later, he falls in love with Tanya Desjani, the captain of his flagship, but pursuing a relationship would involve breaking the rules, which neither is willing to do. They get around it when Geary resigns his admiral's rank and they both disappear for a wedding and honeymoon before the government can promote him back up again. They still have to go back to their best behavior while on active duty.
  • Indestructible Edible: The ration bars the fleet's crews have to force down. Someone who's taste-tested some captured enemy rations says the only good quality they have is that they make the worst Alliance ration bars, the ghastly Danaka Yoruks, seem tasty by comparison.
    "If I have to face death today, why does my possibly last meal have to be a Danaka Yoruk bar?" Geary complained. He ripped the seal, then bit off a chunk and tried to swallow without actually tasting the bar.
    • Adverted later on in the second series with the fleet given some actual food.
    • In Leviathan Geary actually gives serious consideration to using Danaka Yoruks as grapeshot instead of rations.
    • In The Lost Stars, a Syndic officer mentions that they've tried Danaka Yoruks which were captured alongside the soldiers they were issued to, and Syndics can't stand the things either.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: In Leviathan Rione arrives aboard Dauntless and in Geary's stateroom unheralded and on the run from government agents seeking to 'disappear' her as they have already disappeared her husband. After discussing the increasingly dire political-military situation with Geary she asks: "Didn't you used to keep wine in here?"
  • Inertial Dampening: Quite a useful thing to have when ships tend to accelerate up to 0.25c. It is never mentioned how many g ships are accelerating but to reach such speech, it is safe to assume it is in excess of 10g. If it fails during acceleration, it will abruptly turn you and your ship into a cloud of dust.
  • Infinite Supplies: Completely averted. Even after victorious battles, the fleet has still taken damage and has to deal with the repercussions.
  • In Its Hour of Need: CEO Iceni, the Syndic leader of Midway, stays behind and coordinates an evacuation in the face of alien invasion and possible extermination of human life on the planet rather than taking the first ship off as is usually expected. Geary is still suspicious of her since she IS a CEO, but is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt due to this. Iceni goes on to be one of the protagonists of spin-off The Lost Stars, and Geary's assessment is proven mostly correct.
  • Insane Admiral: Whoever is in charge of the enigma and Kick naval forces seem like this by default. For the humans there's Fighting Falco (although he’s not an actual admiral, thank the living stars), most of the Syndicate commanders from the first series, and Otropa, Tosic, Celu, and Chelak of the Alliance (although the former two are more of bureaucratic versions of this).
  • Insignificant Little Blue Planet:
    • Earth matters little to the workings of the universe at large — except that a form of ancestor worship is followed by most of humanity, so as the home of humanity and all its ancestors, if aliens were implicated as attacking it would rouse humanity to genocidal anger against the killers.
    • Among humans, the Sol System is considered a demilitarized zone and neutral in outside affairs, so aside from single warships on explicitly ceremonial missions, no warships are allowed.
    • Many nation-states still exist on Earth, as opposed to the otherwise observed trend of planets belonging to single governments, or even only having governors as part of a larger star nation. For the purposes of plot, this mostly matters due to the red tape potential.
    • This also applies to Mars, which has at least three countries run by corrupt governments. Apparently, Earthlings don't much like the "Reds" and vice versa. Complicated rules exist due to the official peacetime status, such as "can't fire back unless past lunar orbit".
  • Insistent Terminology: The Earthling shuttle pilot in Steadfast resents his flight engineer telling the passengers that he crashed once. It was an "abrupt landing aggravated by adverse conditions".
  • Interservice Rivalry: Some Navy vs. Marines. Desjani mentions that members of said groups finding themselves in the same bar will almost certainly trigger a Bar Brawl... unless the army or the aerospace forces also have personnel there, in which case the squids and the jarheads will join forces and gang up on them.
    • Steadfast also shows us rivalry between the three branches of the military: the fleet, the aerospace forces, and the ground forces. Each has a separate HQ and chain of command. Naturally, there are few protocols for establishing joint command between the three, the only effective one being TECA, Temporary Emergency Command Authority, allowing a high-ranking commander from any of the branches to use any forces for a critical mission. Despite the war with the Syndics being technically over, the Senate has not yet repealed the law. When dealing with the ground forces general and the aerospace forces colonel, Duellos advises Geary to present himself not as an admiral (who will be outranked by the more senior general) but as commander of the fleet in the system (which is equal to both of the above).
    • Averted with the "code monkeys" (i.e. IT support), who willingly work together across the branches. The rest of the soldiers find the so-called "Code of the Monkeys" a little odd.
  • I Surrender, Suckers: The Syndics make use of this, but both sides are notorious for fighting until the very end, even if doing so is totally futile. It doesn't help that both sides have been executing prisoners.
    • This gets to the point where Geary and the fleet won't believe them any more. Only once they've picked up your life pod after blowing your ship from underneath you and you're in an interrogation chamber will they believe you.
      • And then only because they have machines and technicians who can tell if the Syndic is lying or not.
  • It Has Been an Honor: Just about everyone gets to say this at some point. Mostly said to or by Geary. Since nobody knows how many of them, if any, will live to the end. Probably the most epic version is a traditional speech given to those who have chosen to perform a Heroic Sacrifice:
    <Insert Name>, to you and your ship(s) and its/their crew(s), may the living stars welcome you and shine on your valor, may your ancestors look upon you and stand ready to embrace you, may the memories of your names and your deeds shine in the minds of all who come after. You are not lost and not forgotten but forever remembered among the ranks of honor and courage.
  • I Was Just Passing Through: Inverted. Geary, the hero, saves Syndic civilians who were abandoned by their leaders.
  • Kicked Upstairs: Captain Gundel, commander of the auxiliaries, gets this after being too 'busy' to even know the needs of his own ship, not to mention the rest of the ships in the division he's commanding. He gets 'promoted' to a staff position and given a long-term research project on the fleet's resource needs to make it all the way home to get him out of Geary's hair. Which he doesn't finish before the fleet actually does make it home.
  • Killer Rabbit: The bear-cows look like living teddy bears. They've also annihilated all other life on their worlds not required to support themselves and are relentlessly aggressive towards any other species.
  • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Played straight with the use of grapeshot, tiny metal ball bearings fired from railguns which do huge damage in relativistic-speed combat and 'rocks', huge multi-ton metal slugs fired at high speed to cheaply demolish ground emplacements.
    • Averted with the heavy use of hell-lance batteries, essentially charged-particle cannons, alongside grapeshot in fleet combat.
    • Also note that the rocks are really only useful for bombardment of stationary targets. They are more or less worthless against anything that can move. The sole exception to this are the Kicks, who are so slow and stubborn that they took the brunt of a couple hundred rocks being sent at them from a group of ships they were pursuing.
  • King in the Mountain: Geary's reputation.
    • Lampshaded in the second book
    “Which would’ve succeeded if not for the unlooked-for presence of the century-old hero of the Alliance, Captain Black Jack Geary,” Rione stated half-mockingly. “Found on the edge of final death in a lost survival pod, like an ancient king miraculously returned to life to save his people in their hour of greatest need.”
  • Knight Templar: Captain 'Fighting' Falco. Geary and Captain Duellos both agree this is why he is such a charismatic and dangerous man: Because he honestly believes what he says.
  • I Know You Know I Know: Rogero and Bradamont's correspondence is permitted despite their serving on opposite sides because each side's intelligence services think that they can extrapolate useful intelligence from the other side's letters and leak false intelligence to the other side. Both sides have also figured out that the other side is doing this, resulting in all intelligence in the letters being outdated, worthless, or just plain wrong, but they still keep it up in the hopes that the other side will slip up.
  • Lady of War: Several of the Alliance captains, and President Wake of Kane.
  • The Lancer: Captain Duellos fills this role for Geary. Of his captains, Duellos is the one Geary most frequently confides in and the one who provides the most advice to Geary, with the possible exception of Desjani. He is also extremely laid back, contrasting with Geary's somewhat uptight personality.
  • Last-Name Basis: People seem to be referred to by their last names more than their first names. Even in situations where it wouldn't be required to address someone by their last name.
    • May be derived, in part, from actual military uniforms that only display a person's last name, meaning that's the name they have best associated with the person (and might not know their given name), and continued so as not to confuse readers by calling someone one name, and then switching to their relatively unknown first name.
  • Last Stand: The bear-cows aboard a crippled superbattleship, having been abandoned by their leaders, choose to fight to the last Kick against the Alliance Marines that board it.
  • Latex Space Suit: Most of the Navy uniforms. It's most apparent in the Corsair comics.
  • Lawful Stupid: Invoked Trope. The Alliance Navy high command tries to arrest every CO in Geary's fleet for allowing their ship's fuel levels to drop below recommended levels over the course of their long journey home, ignoring the fact that they had been forced to spend several months trapped behind enemy lines with limited capacity to refuel. This effort to establish dominance, which Geary openly declared to be technically legal and utterly moronic, nearly caused a fleet-wide mutiny.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Several of the Alliance officers are this to Geary's plans. Especially Captain Falco. Their fates are rather predictable.
  • Legacy Vessel Naming: Every ship named Invincible has a very short lifespan - by the standards of a fleet where it's almost unheard of for a ship to survive three years past its commissioning. Most sailors believe that the name is an affront to the living stars, although fleet engineers see this superstition as pointless, especially since no captain will have his or her ship be repaired with parts salvaged from an Invincible. Despite this, the fleet bureaucracy refuses to retire the name and keeps naming new ships Invincible as soon as one is destroyed. They get really annoyed when Geary and another admiral choose to christen a captured bear-cow superbattleship Invincible. Even that one is destroyed in Leviathan, but it serves as a distraction for the dark ships, giving Geary's fleet some much needed time.
  • Lensman Arms Race: Averted. It's explicitly mentioned in the first book that most of the weapons used by the fleet in the story's present day are just incremental upgrades of the weapons used by the fleet before the war. The null field is the only truly new weapon developed over the course of a century, and it's so short ranged that it rarely gets used.
  • Lie Detector: Interrogation rooms are actually brain scanners similar to an fMRI. The machine shows the interrogator when regions of the subject's brain associated with deception or various other emotions light up, so not only do they know when the subject lies, but they can also tell when one of their questions has really hit home, even if the subject is refusing to answer at all. There are ways to deceive the interrogators without setting off the machine, but those usually involve Weasel Words that a skilled interrogator can spot. Of course, the machine can still only tell you what the subject believes, so false answers with no deception noted are still possible from a dupe or a delusional subject.
  • Lightning Bruiser: The dark ship fleet. Because of the lack of living personnel on board, they can maneuver 30% more sharply than regular Alliance ships, and can be equipped with twice as many weapons.
  • Like a God to Me: Geary himself never gets close to a god complex, but plenty of others are willing to pick up the slack, though, it should be said, not without a bit of a point:
    Admiral Timbale: "At that point? The fleet believed lost, the Syndics running amuck in this star system, our few defenders barely hanging on, then the fleet appears and swoops down like angels of vengeance on the Syndics, and transmissions tell us that Black Jack is back, that he's saved the fleet, and now he's saving us." Timbale laughed softly. "At that moment, Black Jack was a god."
  • Living Legend: Geary. So much in fact the certain people in the Alliance want to remove him because of the power he holds with the military and public. They are scared of what he could do.
  • Loophole Abuse: By the end of the main series, Geary and Desjani want to be together. However, fleet regulations prevent Geary from having a personal relationship with a subordinate of his. Thus, he gives up his rank of fleet admiral and goes back to being a captain. Realizing that the fleet bureaucracy has already likely re-promoted him to admiral, he refuses to read his messages and goes after Desjani. They get married before Geary is finally informed of his promotion. Geary's superiors are not amused at this turn of events.
    • As mentioned in a couple other places, Geary is the senior captain in the fleet due to being in survival sleep for a century. Command of the fleet naturally devolves to either the highest ranking or most senior officer and, even though the promotion was "posthumous," this makes him the most senior captain by a century. This is how he keeps Captain Falco from taking over the fleet.
    • In Resolute, Desjani reveals that there's a duck aboard the Dauntless, smuggled by drunk marines on liberty. When Geary suggests she keeps the duck as a ship mascot, Desjani points out that it's against the regs. So, instead, she's going to make the duck an ensign. Geary is surprised that an animal can be made an officer. Desjani explains that she looked it up, and there's nothing in the rules about an officer having to be human. She then makes the offending marines escort the duck on its walks through the halls of the ship, while being forced to salute to "Ensign Duck". The duck ends up saving Geary's life from an assassin wearing a stealth suit. No sensor manages to pick up the active camo, but Desjani is immediately on alert when the duck suddenly stops in the middle of the hallway and begins to hiss at nothing.
  • Love Triangle: Geary, Rione, and Desjani. At least until they find out Rione's husband might not be dead.
    • In the end, it almost neatly solves itself, as Rione decides to end it once Geary/Desjani's mutual attraction becomes more apparent. It's not that she cares that much for Geary, she's just no one's second choice (also, that thing with her husband). The triangle essentially ends, but, almost to the point of comedy, Desjani and Rione still snipe at each other as if it were still going strong; if anything, they seem to become more embittered with each other after the triangle ends.
    • Almost comes back to bite them in Dreadnaught, when Rione's husband is recovered from a Syndic POW camp.
  • Lower-Deck Episode: The spinoff comic Corsair (following escaped prisoners of war who missed most of the fleet's campaign) and the prequel short story "Ishigaki" (the sole story to date told from the POV of an enlisted sailor) both feature protagonists who are lower-ranking than the usual POV characters and have a more objective and curious view of Geary.
  • Malicious Slander: In Fearless, some of the captains opposed to Geary try to claim that he destroyed the Sancere hyperspace gate himself because he was afraid of losing command of the fleet.
    • Some elements of the Alliance media try to depict Geary's battles with the bear-cows as having been started by the humans, never mind the fact that the Kicks opened fire first.
  • Mars: As Geary and Desjani find out in Steadfast, the Red Planet has three countries run by corrupt governments and is a haven for mercenaries.
  • Mass "Oh, Crap!": The fleet conference at the end of Fearless, when the surviving captains and officers who followed "Fighting Falco" in mutiny against Geary's command realize that their new hero has crossed the line from "arrogant certainty" to "delusional insanity", reducing the defense of their actions to "we jumped off a cliff to follow a madman because It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time."
  • Master of None: The battle cruisers, exactly like real life. Both the Alliance and Syndics had the unfortunate tendency of putting their best and brightest in command of these ships, accelerating the loss of experienced personnel beyond even what would normally happen during a war.
    • The reasoning for that is because, under the new "tactics", a fleet commander is expected to lead his or her fleet into battle, not stay back under the thick armor of a slow battleship. Shields and armor don't matter much when the goal is to inflict the highest number of losses on the enemy. In fact, battleships are the ones who get the less-than-stellar officers because it's believed that the heavier armor and shielding of a battleship may compensate for their shortcomings.
    • The battle cruisers do have one area in which they're better than other capital ships: speed. Their lighter armor allows them to accelerate more quickly than the battleships. This means that they excel at chasing down or intercepting enemies.
    • The scout battleship is even more of an example than battle cruisers. A cross between a battleship and a heavy cruiser, it is too small and fragile to do the work of a battleship, and too large and slow to do the work of a cruiser. By the time of the series there is only one squadron of the things left; they all get destroyed during the journey back from Syndicate space, and nobody even considers asking the government to build some more.
  • Mathematician's Answer: The Dancers can occasionally reply in this manner, continually frustrating the person assigned to try to communicate with them. They see nothing wrong with answer to "How did you get here?" (they appear to be able to travel through jumpspace in a manner different from humans) with "By ship." It's later revealed that part of the reason they do that is because they assume that any speech without a rhythm is something like baby talk, so they respond in kind. Once Geary's people start sending messages worded as poems, the Dancers' replies get more concrete. But it doesn't really stop. In the second spin-off sequel series, after Geary's fleet encounters the Taon in a Dancer border system, all the Dancers tell them is, "Taon are Taon, Taon are always Taon, must remember this." In the next book, they speculate that this their way of saying "we know what they're like, but there's no quick way to explain it to you." Essentially like saying "cats are like cats." If you know what a cat is, then you know. If you don't, you probably need a textbook or something.
  • Mauve Shirt: There are some captains who impress Geary and spend 1-3 books with decent supporting roles before being killed or captured, such as Captain Mosko, the unnamed captain of the Terrible, Suram, and Shen.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A lot of characters think that Geary was found because the living stars thought he was needed. He denies this as it would feed god complex beliefs in him. However the fact that he was the right man at the right place, and every single one of his instincts turn out to work in the long run, it's hard to argue against it.
    • In the second series it's all but confirmed that the living stars have been guiding everyone.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • In retrospect, is it any surprise that Captain Kila turned out to be a murderer?
    • A scientist specializing in until-now-theoretical intelligent nonhumans is Dr. Setin.
  • Meaningful Re Name: After Geary captures the Kick superbattleship, the crews begin to refer it with mocking nicknames, that turn into increasingly long acronyms. Eventually, the former POW put in command of it, Admiral Lagemann, decides to rename it Invincible. When they get back to Alliance space, Geary and the others object to the council wanting to rename the ship, stating that it would be dishonorable to the soldiers who died on the ship defending it. (It's surely pure coincidence that this would take the 'cursed' Invincible name out of circulation aboard a permanent hangar queen.)
  • MegaCorp: The Syndicate Worlds are seemingly comprised of several Mega Corps. Officers in the fleet are even referred to as CEOs.
  • The Men First: In the opening battle of the war, Captain Geary refused to abandon ship until the last moment, continuing to handle the helm and fire control until every surviving member of his crew had made it off the ship.
  • Men of Sherwood: Boarding operations and land battles that require Geary to deploy the Alliance Marines almost invariably end in success, with most to all of the Marines making it out alive.
  • Medal of Dishonor: Both Desjani and Carabali feel that way about some of their medals.
  • Metaphorgotten: A cultural example in-universe, as in the intervening time between Geary's hibernation and the present timeline of the story the phrases "The witch is dead" and "the fat lady sings" have been conflated into "the witch sings." Slightly less egregious than most, as both are used to mean something is over.
    • Another combines Catch-22 and 42 (the answer to life, the universe, and everything) into Catch 42, "the meaning of life is that you always get screwed."
    • Being nibbled to death by ducks has somehow become being licked to death by cows.
  • Mighty Glacier: Battleships, as expected. They pack quite a punch, so much so that a single battleship can take on several battlecruisers. However, since the new fleet mentality is Attack! Attack! Attack!, battleships are considered too slow for a "proper" fight and are usually crewed by officers who lack in aggressiveness (i.e. they like to think before acting).
    • The Kick superbattleships dwarf any human built ship, and have the firepower to match their size. They are also among the slowest and least maneuverable warships in the series.
  • Mildly Military: Until Geary came back, the fleet had stopped the tradition of saluting (except the Marines). Also until Geary, admirals didn't give out battle orders, they made suggestions on what to do next and all the captains of the fleet voted on it. And gaining high rank in the fleets was often more due to one's skill as a politician than as a leader. This causes Geary no end of frustration, and he makes a minor project out of reintroducing salutes to the fleet.
  • Miles Gloriosus: Mister Medals and his entire fleet, who literally eject out of fully functioning warships when they start losing a battle.
  • Military Maverick: Inverted. Captain Geary is thought of as crazy because he uses reasonable and not particularly noteworthy tactics. This baffles his officers, who fervently believe charging in guns blazing straight at the enemy is the only honorable and sensible way to fight in fleet combat.
    • Ironically, this Honor Before Reason mindset was inspired by the cult of personality built up around Geary's very own Last Stand at the start of the war.
  • Mirror Match: Geary has to fight AI ships programmed with his fighting style. They're not as good as him due to being robots, but they're very challenging nonetheless.
  • Mission from God: Desjani informs an appalled Geary that she believes him to be 'on a mission from the living stars.'
  • The Missus and the Ex: Geary finds himself living this trope after breaking up with Rione and getting together with Desjani. All of them are stuck on the same ship. Geary just tries to keep out of the line of fire.
  • Multinational Team: At the end of Implacable, this is the solution Geary and the others come up with for the Dancers' requirement that they only deal with one human entity. The resident historian pulls up the example of the founding colonies of the Alliance sending their ships to defend Glenlyon and Kosatka from hostile vessels. Essencially, a border force would be created, and any human entity that wishes to contribute ships to it would be able to speak to the Dancers as a representative while retaining autonomy in other respects.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Enigmas always blow up their ships rather than risk capture, but during one skirmish, one ejects from a ship just prior to self destruction. It still gets killed and mangled in the blast, but is surmised to have disagreed with that philosophy.
  • Napoleon Delusion: Mention is made of a medical condition called a Geary Complex where an officer believes that they are the only one who can save the Alliance, sometimes believing themselves to be the reincarnation of Captain Geary. At least one medical officer seems to believe THE Captain Geary is suffering from a Geary Complex. Entertainingly, it is pointed out that at least he doesn't have to worry about imagining he's Captain Geary reincarnated, being the real thing and all.
  • The Neidermeyer: Captain Numos in spades. Also Captain Kila, General Sissons, Commander Vebos
and General Julian.
  • Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Played straight and averted. Geary never speaks ill of the dead, even when frustrated with commanders who got their crews killed due in part to the mindset of the fleet commanders and his training to praise in public and admonish in private. Rione has no such compunction, however.
    • Geary also tries to give Captain Falco credit for things he may have done before the ship he was on blew up.
    • Played straight in regards to Desjani's feelings towards Rione. Even though she hated Rione, she can't bring herself to speak ill of her after she performed her Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After Geary succeeds in destroying the dark ships' support facilities, thus crippling their ability to resupply on expendables, including fuel cells, he is informed by Admiral Bloch that this has resulted in the ships activating their "Armageddon Option", which will cause them to utilize scorched earth tactics against key Alliance systems, starting with Unity.
  • Noodle Incident: "Black Jack" Geary refuses to explain how he got his nickname.
    • A particularly dark version is referenced, an incident a long time ago prompted the Alliance to devise the most dishonorable death that they could humanly imagine. And some felt that it still wasn't bad enough punishment.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: Subverted right in the beginning. Captain Geary tries to make good on this only to realize that several of his ships are clearly not going to make the escape from the enemy until another ship (commanded by his grandnephew!) performs a Heroic Sacrifice.
    • In Invincible they are scrupulous about it, refusing to leave any bodies or prisoners behind in alien-controlled space.
    • In Leviathan, Victoria Rione gives Geary no choice in the matter, choosing to go out with a bang (a nova-scale bang, to be exact) with her husband, while taking out the dark ships.
  • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: By the standards of his own era, Geary isn't that talented of a commander. But a solid century of brutal war has left him as the only person - on either side - who has been trained in 4D tactical maneuvers, making him a military genius by the standards of the era he finds himself in. He does, however, manage to figure out how to deal with two alien races and a fleet of AI-controlled warships programmed to think like him, albeit with Desjani's help.
  • Now What?: Geary is pretty much the only person in the Alliance in a position of authority who can remember a time when the Alliance wasn't at war, which is why the difficulties of transitioning from a war mindset to a peace mindset is a major plot point in the second series.

    Tropes O - Z 
  • Oddly Small Organization: Geary's staff as fleet commander consists of one person (who he never talks to, as Gundel was Kicked Upstairs to a staff position so he could be removed from command of the auxiliaries) in the first series, and zero people in the second. While it's mentioned that many staff duties can be handled by computers in the story's present day, and Bloch's staff died in the first chapter with the rest of the senior officers, it seems odd that nobody provided Geary with a staff once he made it back home.
  • Officer and a Gentleman: Geary and Desjani fit this to a T. Painfully so, after they clearly communicate in unspoken language their mutual romantic attraction. But they refuse to act on it, or even acknowledge it in words, because it would be inappropriate.
  • Oh, Crap!: At the end of the third book, the Alliance fleet is about to leave Lakota for the first time. While they were there, the aliens diverted to Lakota about half of a Syndic main force who'd been going somewhere else. As they're leaving, who else should show up but the other half of the Syndic fleet, following them from Ixion.
    • Basically, anything involving exploding hypernet gates or alien ships is a very, very big Oh, Crap! moment.
    • Right at the end of Dreadnaught, the fleet jumps into what they suspect might be the border of yet another alien race. They are not disappointed as the system has a planetoid sized fortress at each jump point, capable of firing 900 ship-sized missiles at once, and the largest ships yet seen. Quite the change from the much more reserved enigma race, whose one claim to awe-inspiring technology was the hypernet gates.
  • Old Flame Fizzle: A problem when reuniting with prisoners of war.
  • Older Than They Look: Geary. Being a Human Popsicle going on 100 years will do that to you.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: The Kicks: They evolved as a herbivore herd species. They started by killing all of their predators.... and all carnivores on their planet.... and all the other animals on their planet.... And all plant life that they couldn't eat... and any sentient species that get near them...]
  • One Nation Under Copyright: The Syndicate is completely governed by corporations with even their military commanders being "executives". Their central governing body is the Executive Council which consists of the most influential business leaders.
  • Only Sane Man: Geary. When he's not restraining his subordinates from harebrained, damn-the-torpedoes headlong charges into battle, he's fighting a desperate battle of wits against the faction among them that wants to overthrow their government and make him God-Emperor or something. And then there was the aptly-named Captain Kila and her little Klingon Promotion scheme...
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Captain John Geary is a very calm, stoic sort of man who usually keeps his temper under firm control. He firmly believes that a good leader praises in public and admonishes in private, and when he does reprimand someone he doesn't feel the need to raise his voice. When he blows his stack and yells at a junior officer in front of the entire bridge crew, that junior officer has done something to really deserve it. Leaving enemy prisoners tied up onboard a captured ship as they prepare to scuttle it, for example.
  • Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Averted, with a twist. There's no mention made of any of our present religions, but both Alliance and Syndics believe in a divine power referred to as "the living stars." The Alliance, at least, also devotes one of the most protected areas of each ship to a chapel where people come to commune with the spirits of their ancestors. The relation between the living stars and the ancestors is never really spelled out, but people speak of either group, more or less interchangeably, having sent Geary to save the fleet and get it back on the right moral track. They also theorize that the random lights that appear in jump space are representations of the ancestors.
    • This gets explained in book five: The concept of the "living stars" refers to the fact that every element that makes up a human was made in the fusion reaction of a sun. That is, we are all made out of star stuff. Burial in space involves launching the person into the star so that they will become a part of the next star system when it goes nova.
    • Then later subverted when Geary hears of a new myth that appeared in the last 100 years: if you pass through a black hole system, it makes you want to fly the ship into the black hole. Geary is left wondering where the hell that came from, because it used to be standard procedure to use those systems for travel.
    • Old Earth religions are mentioned in Steadfast when Geary and Desjani are visiting Stonehenge. Geary points out that the people who built Stonehenge did not believe in ancestors. Desjani counters that, at their core, they believed the same thing but used different names for it.
  • One-Federation Limit: There aren't many named governments in the series, so this is justified. The governments we know of are the Alliance, the Syndicate Worlds, the Rift Federation, the Callas Republic, the Covenant of the First Stars, and Sol.
  • Overclocking Attack: Attempting to destroy the hypernet gates results in an explosion somewhere between a nuclear bomb and a supernova (depending on how they are destroyed). From all appearances, the gates were designed to work this way, but humanity never noticed.
  • Perpetual Poverty: The fleet running low on supplies and the auxiliary ships lacking the time and/or raw materials to make more is a problem that turns up regularly. Fighting a running war through enemy territory with no supply line beyond what the fleet can salvage from enemy ships or facilities can do this. Sometimes the auxiliaries can be full to the point of slowing the fleet down, and then end up critically low on raw materials after resupplying the fleet after a single battle. Complicating the issue is the fact that Geary tries to minimize casualties and is so good at it that the fleet's resource allocation AI has no idea how to cope with it. Needing to use supplies faster than they can be replaced catches up with Geary in the final battle of the fifth book, when ships start falling out of formation because they've completely run out of fuel. Fortunately, this battle is fought in an Alliance border system, which means that once it's over, they can call the locals for help.
  • Point Defenseless: Averted completely. The weapons all capital ships carry are just as effective against small targets as large ones and small one man craft have neither the weapons nor the shielding to be able to win against larger vessels. They aren't any faster or maneuverable either thanks to the way thrust-mass ratios work in vacuum.
  • Poor Communication Kills: This nearly happens in Resolute, when General Drakon walks up to Geary and Desjani and tells them, "Duck!" All Desjani can do is look at him in shock and ask how he knew. Except what Drakon was trying to do was keep them alive. Luckily, they all survive the explosive planted nearby and set to kill Geary. Later, Geary asks Desjani what she meant, and she explains that there's a duck aboard the Dauntless, brought aboard by drunk marines on liberty. When Drakon said, "Duck!", she assumed he somehow found out.
  • Portal Network: The hypernet gates.
    • Also, the jump points in each system which allow for FTL travel between nearby systems.
  • P.O.V. Sequel: The Lost Stars begins as this to last three installments of Beyond the Frontier, covering the same time period from the perspective of a pair of former Syndic CEOs.
  • Prophecies Are Always Right: It is believed that the ancestors of the Alliance would send Black Jack Geary to save the Alliance when he was needed most. Though, technically it was more like, the Alliance found Black Jack Geary when they would need him most.
  • Psychic Block Defense: It turns out that the Alliance sometimes installs mental blocks in certain people in order to keep their secrets hidden. Unfortunately, after six months, the subjects experience personality shifts and begin to act irrationally. Any treatment is a failure, as the subject can never reveal the truth about their condition. Most end up committing suicide. Rione's husband has a mental block related to the development of biological weapons. He is only allowed to talk about it if given direct permission by a fleet commander, which Geary unintentionally does, and without anyone else listening in.
    • When Geary asks the senior fleet doctor about it, the doctor points out that not only is it against regulations to talk about mental blocks, it's against regulations for the doctor to tell Geary that talking about it is against regulations.
  • Psycho Supporter: Captain Badaya would be this to Geary if he weren't so hamfisted about it and Geary wasn't rather a lot brighter than him. He ends up forestalling a coup by convincing Badaya that he's now The Man Behind the Man to the entire Alliance senate.
  • Ramming Always Works: Highly unrecommended, given the speed the ships are traveling, even the slightest contact would completely destroy both ships involved. That said, the enigmas, the Syndics, and the dark ships all use it as a tactic of desperation.
  • Rank Up: In Relentless, after the fleet gets back to the Alliance, the grand council promotes Geary directly to fleet admiral, a rank which no officer of the Alliance Navy has ever held, to his extreme discomfort.
    • The Alliance fleet itself undergoes a lot of this due to the attrition from the war, although due to the politics involved, none of Geary's officers get promoted after he wins the war except for Colonel Carabali being promoted to major general.
    • In the short story Ishigaki a decade after the war's beginning, Commander Weiss had been a young ensign on Geary's ship The Merlon when the was broke out, and it's speculated that the admiral in charge of their task force might not have even been a lieutenant during the Battle of Grendel.
  • Readers Are Geniuses: The descriptions of the battles. Very complex 4D tactics are involved.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Captain Geary's subplot primarily involves him being this and resisting becoming a dictator.
    • It's also one of the few blessings he gets over the course of the series. Not all the ship captains are as gung-ho as others, and several, especially Tulev and Duellos, are valuable allies in keeping the fleet together. Even some members of the Senate's Grand Council, for all the accusations of corruption the fleet directs at the civilian government, are reasonable, and cement this fact by refusing to use the hypernet gates as doomsday weapons.
    • The CEO of Midway, Gwen Iceni, is one of the few the fleet encounters in Syndic space. She wins a lot of points with Geary by staying on a planet that to her knowledge was soon to be obliterated and coordinating the evacuation instead of grabbing everything she could carry and jumping on the first ship out.
    • The commander from the Europa Quarantine Fleet manages to buck the rule bound ways of the Sol system and work with Geary to recover officers kidnapped and taken to the moon, despite strict orders to allow no one to leave, with appropriate safety measures in place. It was necessary because the kidnappers would inevitably try to lift off and be destroyed, spraying potentially diseased debris around the system, but there was no guarantee he would listen to logic.
  • Red Baron: 'Black Jack' Geary. Many of the Syndics and some of the Alliance officers are practically terrified of him. More than one refuses to believe he is who he says he is. Interestingly flip flopped, since Geary is not the heroic 'Black Jack' persona the Alliance crafted of him; however, he spends much of the book fighting his own temptations to use that image to become a despot.
    • Also 'Fighting' Falco and Otropa 'The Anvil'. 'The Anvil' is more of an Embarrassing Nickname, though. He got it because he gets beaten so much. General Arnold Julian is known as the "Butcher of Malphas", since he has Zapp Brannigan's own grasp of tactics and no regard for the lives of his soldiers.
  • Redemption Equals Death: After she comes under suspicion of being disloyal to the anti-Geary conspiracy, they kill Captain Gaes — and her entire crew. But not before she manages to out the killer to Geary.
  • Resigned to the Call: Eventually Geary realizes that, even if he gets the fleet home, he can't resign his commission. The Alliance needs him.
  • Retcon: Early on in the series, Geary states to Rione that there is no ancestral Geary family home on Glenlyon, but when he finally returns in Boundless (after the release of The Genesis Fleet prequel trilogy) he returns to the house his ancestor Rob Geary built and which the family has lived in ever since (complete with secret passages and rooms young Gearys are shown when they come of age).
  • Revenge: Geary contemplates this on aliens.
  • Right Hand Versus Left Hand:
    • This trope is the reason why the dark fleet was possible. Security classifications had gotten so out of hand (Rione mentioned that she knew one security guy who refused to confirm or deny public domain information that could easily be looked up in any library) that nobody in the government really understood what the government was doing. While every component of the government's ultra-classified projects was being overseen, nobody was overseeing the big picture, and none of the people overseeing the pieces talked to each other. As a result, nobody realized how out of control things were getting until it all blew up in their faces.
    • The organization behind the Europa plague kept their project to develop a bioweapon that couldn't be detected by enemy biofilters so secret that they didn't even tell the biofilter design people on their side about it. This ended up biting them and everyone else on Europa back, hard.
  • The Rival: Desjani and Rione are this to each other. First being romantic competitors for Geary, even after Desjani ends up with John, they still bicker with each other over almost everything.
  • Rule of Drama: Campbell seems incapable of letting anything ever be as simple as it first looks. There's always a hidden trap, a deeper meaning, or concealed motive.
  • Running Gag:
    • The fast fleet auxiliary ships. Which move with all the speed of a beached whale and even slower when they're loaded with cargo. The implication seems to be that they're fast compared to their predecessors. Which is like saying a snail is fast compared to a two-toed sloth.
    • Anytime there's a reference to something from our time, usually a phrase (such as "persian donkeys"), the characters have absolutely no idea where it originated from.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Dear living stars, averted. The fleet jumps into a system, and its sensors show where all enemy ships in the system are — or rather, where they were when the light the fleet is seeing left them. The enemy won't see the fleet for another however many hours — days, in some cases. And if the enemy force is large, they know there'll be a fierce battle ... in another day or three. At one point, Geary thinks about how bizarre it seems that he's leaving the bridge for about six hours to get some food and sleep while they're technically in the middle of a battle — but right then, there's literally nothing useful he can do except make sure he's well-rested when it's time for quick decisions.
    • In the first book, an inhabited planet is described as being 1.2 light hours from the star it orbits. Earth is about 8 light minutes from the Sun, that must be one hell of a hot star, since people are described as living on the surface. The planet would be orbiting the star about halfway between where Jupiter and Saturn orbit Sol.
    • Played straight considering the length of time both sides have been fighting, if the war is anything but a limited conflict. The idea that two economics could sustain a Total War to a stalemate for almost 100 years is very far fetched, considering how much a Total War economy drains an economy's resources. Skilled manpower losses seem to be critical, but whether that translates to an ordinary/unskilled' manpower shortage is unclear.
    • At least by the end of the sixth book, the Syndic Systems are falling apart, with similar circumstances being all too possible for the Alliance (had Geary's victories not severely bolstered morale). The newest ships in Geary's fleet, the Adroit class, are also appallingly underdesigned, having cut back on basically everything and with corners cut everywhere they could, including sensors so bad they need to mooch off of other ships' to function. It is all too clear that the war was very nearly over, one way or another, before Geary got into the picture.
  • Secret Test of Character: Double Subverted. When the Alliance fleet comes across a small colony of abandoned Syndics (Dying Planet, below) who will soon die if they don't intervene. Geary decides to save them because he thinks it's a Secret Test of Character provided by their ancestors. Even though there is no test to speak of, he still believes they need to pass it. Later it's revealed the governor of one of the Syndic worlds had family that Geary helped save, and in thanks she provides them with the location of much needed supplies they can get.
    • The friendly Taon pull one in Resolute after Geary insists that he won't get involved in their internal disputes. The friendly Taon ships charge at Geary's task force, apparently coming in for an attack run. When Geary doesn't open fire on them, their leader breaks off the run and hails Geary, stating that he sees and is impressed by their commitment to their word.
  • Shiny-Looking Spaceships: Captain Geary laments that this is not the case in Dauntless, despite being in the future even from his perspective. The Used Future aesthetic comes down to the fact that there's simply no point in putting a lot of effort into prettifying a ship that's only got a projected lifespan of 5 years at most.
  • Shout-Out:
    • A one-line mention in Victorious that Captain Parr commands the ship Incredible. He later speak up more often as the series goes on.
    • Dreadnaught has a Shout Out to Orlando Furioso with Alliance Captain Bradamont who's fallen in love with a Syndic officer named Rogero.
    • If a spaceship had plants on board, one was usually called Audrey. The reason for that, if there was a reason, was "lost in the mists of the past."
    • Invincible has a brief Shout-Out to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when Geary mentions "Everything. Life. The Universe."
    • In Guardian, mention is made of a Marine sergeant named Lamarr who likes to fiddle with technology in her spare time. This is a reference to actress Hedy Lamarr, who co-invented an early type of frequency-hopping spread-spectrum technology, the forerunner to Wi-fi and Bluetooth.
    • In Steadfast, Geary meets Lieutenant Popova, a female FAC pilot whose codename is "Night Witch". During World War II, the Red Army Air Force had all-female biplane forces whom the Germans dubbed "Nachthexen" (or "Night Witches") given their tactic of cutting their engines right before strafing German camps under the cover of darkness - seemingly attacking out of thin air, with no possibility of retaliation, and disappearing with a 'whoosh'. One of their most decorated pilots was Nadezhda Popova.
    • Also in Steadfast, the commander of Alliance aerospace forces, the equivalent of a modern day air force, in the Adriana system is Colonel Galland.
    • In Leviathan we meet Marine Colonel Rico and Captain Young, who commands his transport.
    • The Wooareek sound and act a lot like the laid-back Surfer Dude sea turtles from Finding Nemo, though they look like squids.
    • In Implacable, one of the ship commanders who has arrived with General Julian attempts to blackmail Captain Badaya into going along with Julian's plan to attack the Dancers, Taon, Wooareek, Midway, and anyone else who defies the Alliance by threatening to publicize Badaya's former anti-government sentiments. Badaya snaps back that she can "publish, then, and be damned", echoing The Duke of Wellington's famous retort to a blackmail attempt by a scandal-mongering publisher who was about to release a tell-all memoir by a famed London courtesan and former lover of Wellington's.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The fleet manages to bring back two sedated bear-cows alive. They promptly commit suicide the moment they are woken up.
    • After spending the better part of two books getting the captured Kick superbattleship back to Alliance space, and having lost a bunch of Marines several ships doing it, Geary has to sit back and watch as it is destroyed by the dark fleet, it having been converted into a decoy to save his fleet.
    • After Geary learns what is wrong with Rione's husband and bring him to people who can treat him, Alliance security keeps coming up with reasons to delay the treatments until the trauma caused by his mental blocks renders him permanently catatonic.
  • Shrouded in Myth: Captain John 'Black Jack' Geary after he is used as the shining example of a sailor by the alliance. 'Black Jack' because his 'official' biographies claim, among other things, that his performance reports were always in the black - that is to say, meeting or exceeding expectations. Geary denies that this was true, and evidently always disliked the nickname.
  • Sink The Life Boats: a habit on both sides. Geary is not pleased when he finds out.
    • The enigma race sink their entire ships, crew and all, if they can't escape to prevent anything from being learned about them.
  • Socially Awkward Hero: Captain (later Admiral) John Geary. Excellent tactician and leader of men, unimpeachable personal honor, Cannot Talk to Women if his life depends on it.
  • Soldier vs. Warrior: Geary is a Soldier through-and-through, finding himself in command of a fleet consisting entirely of Warriors. Reining in their Leeroy Jenkins tendencies is still something of a work in progress as of the latest installment.
  • So Proud of You: Geary's reaction to the fleet on a regular basis. His people live for those moments and do everything in their power to create many of them.
  • Space Is an Ocean: Averted. Space battles and maneuvers always take full advantage of three-dimensional space. The fact that direction is based entirely on point of view in space is addressed more than once. One minor exception to this aversion would be when Geary notes that evading ships will always travel "up" relative to the plane of the system, when "down" makes just as much sense. This part is less about space being an ocean and more about how combat aircraft maneuver.
  • Space Fighter: Discussed and ultimately averted. The Syndics attempt to attack the fleet with Fast Attack Craft, but the Alliance brushes this off as an ineffective tactic used out of desperation. Geary explains that in space, everything is relative and that the FACs are about as fast and maneuverable as the fleet's destroyers and that the FACs' small weapons loadouts are useless against even the weakest of the Alliance's ships.
  • Space Friction: Averted. If ships want to slow down, they typically have to fire their engines in the opposite direction to reduce speed.
  • Space Madness: Prolonged exposure (more than two weeks at a stretch) to jump space can induce this, at least in humans. Some ships in Implacable show up after month long jumps with half the crew having murdered the other half.
  • Space Mines: Used by both sides for both offense and defense, especially when deployed near the jump points. The hypernet gates that came into use during the war turn out to also be turned into these, and they have nova level destructive potential.
  • Space Navy: Played straight. The fleet has destroyers, light cruisers, heavy cruisers, battleships,battle cruisers, and auxiliaries. Crewmen are referred to as sailors, with the rank of seaman still in use, and knot-tying is still a basic skill all crewmen are expected to master. The capital ships each carry a Marine complement as well. The only thing missing are carriers, because small attack craft simply don't work in fleet engagements.
  • Spanner in the Works: Defied and played straight. Badaya is made acting commander of the fleet after Geary is ordered out of Alliance fleet. After concluding that this has been done under the expectation he will act rashly and get the fleet into trouble, Badaya decides to do nothing - clearly refusing to be the Spanner to Geary while also being the Spanner to whoever put him in charge. He of course takes great pleasure in having defied the expectations of everyone.
  • Species Loyalty: Despite spending a century at war with the Syndicate, the Alliance fleet still defends Midway against the enigma race. The spider-wolves appear to be impressed by this in humans, referring to them as "brother-enemies".
    • The enigma are speculated to also have this trait. The main enigma planets are separated from each other by buffer systems laced with defenses and mines, indicating separate factions. Yet the ships from each of those factions work together in the face of the Alliance fleet.
  • Spin-Off: Beyond The Frontier is a Type 8 for the Lost Fleet, being a more or less direct continuation of the original series.
    • The Lost Stars and Genesis Fleet are both Type 11, taking place in the same continuity. The Lost Stars occurs at the same time as the Beyond the Frontier novels while Genesis Fleet takes place centuries in the past.
    • The Corsair comic series begins just after the initial escape from the Syndic home system in the first book and runs concurrently to the original series.
  • Squick: An in-universe example. It's never stated what, and not even a clue is given to the exact genre of squick (i.e., sexual or not), but there are underground networks in the fleet used to share videos of ... something ... that makes battle-hardened veterans become very queasy. The officer who reveals that this network was used to transmit a viral worm is very nervous about coming forward.
    • Extends somewhat into There Should Be a Law, except that it's mentioned it's technically not illegal, as it's all computer generated. If actual humans were used, "the producers would find themselves facing eternity in prison."
  • Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: Of course, but nothing smaller than a destroyer is fit for relativistic combat due to mass-thrust ratios. Fast Attack Craft (starfighters) do exist in small numbers but they're short-range, weak and easily destroyed. They're used by the aerospace forces for air and space patrol and interdiction and have a sleek, manta-like shape for atmospheric flight. A squadron can take on a Hunter-Killer at great risk, and they might be able to cripple a battleship, but it's mentioned that they don't stand much of a chance.
    • The Syndics don't have destroyers. Instead, they have Hunter-Killers, slightly faster than destroyers but smaller and drop like flies even faster. Their system defense forces also have "nickel" corvettes, so nicknamed because they are relatively cheap to build and maintain and can be thrown away just as easily.
  • Starcrossed Lovers: Captain Bradamont and CEO Rogero.
  • Starfish Aliens:
    • Those who know about the enigma aliens spend most of their time trying to figure out how they might look or think, and come to very little real conclusions, fitting their name. The aliens are later proven to be amphibian physically, though their exact mentality is subject to debate, aside from extreme paranoia.
    • Geary encounters two new alien species, one that looks like teddy bears, the other like an unholy cross between spiders and wolves. Ironically, the spiders-wolves are the only ones we can relate to and who actually communicate instead of trying to kill us.
  • Stealth in Space: Considered and averted, in the case of the enigma. Geary and his senior captains spend a lot of time trying to figure out how the enigmas hide their ships, until they eventually realize that their sensors are just getting hacked.
    • Humans have stealth shuttles and suits for covert ops, but they only delay detection when an active search is under way, and also rely heavily on software trickery in addition to physical attributes.
    • In Steadfast, the fleet comes across a Syndic world where there is very clearly combat going on, with installations suffering kinetic strikes and running ships getting blown to pieces, but they can't see any enemy. When they by chance get images, they disappear from the systems. After eliminating outside interference or internal sabotage or malware, they narrow it down to one conclusion: software patches that have been causing bugs throughout the book for both the ships and other Alliance forces they met were in fact designed by their own military to hide a 'dark fleet' stronger even than Gearys.
  • The Stoic: Captain Tulev, whose facial expression remains firmly neutral at all times.
  • Stranger in a Familiar Land: In a conversation with Geary, Duellos talks about his visit home after the war ended and how completely everyone's mindset had changed, leaving him feeling obsolete.
    • Geary himself cites the trope as the reason why he doesn't want to go home to Glenlyon; everything he remembers there will have been altered or erased by the passage of a hundred years.
  • The Strategist: The secret to Geary's success, actually planning out his moves rather than go Attack! Attack! Attack! like everyone else does. Some of his subordinates learn about this as they go on. The Syndics later try to be this by emulating some of Gear's formations, but they fail since they don't understand the purpose of said formations.
  • Stunned Silence: Captain Badaya's reaction for about half a minute when Geary allows him to keep his command after he chokes in a bad situation.
    • Also happens when Badaya starts doing smart things when people least expect him to, such as urging caution or refusing to act rashly when placed in command of a fleet.
  • Surfer Dude: The Wooareek talk this way. Their invitation alone baffles Geary: "There is no danger. Totally safe. Totally! Please tell us you are cool with this offer and will send your ship with us. Peace to all!"
  • Tactical Withdrawal: Geary successfully steers the fleet through a withdrawal from deep behind enemy lines. This proves devastating for the Syndicates, both for morale and the ensuing military losses.
  • Taking You with Me: Two sets of aliens go in for suicide attacks. The bear-cows in particular have manned torpedoes.
  • Tastes Like Chicken: All meat in ration bars taste like chicken, except for the chicken, which tastes like ham. Thus everyone is certain that the spicy chicken curry bars cannot possibly contain any actual chicken, because it actually tastes like (unspicy) chicken curry.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Alliance POWS and Aragon’s syndicate troops for the first few issues of Corsair.
  • Tempting Fate: Several times
    • Every ship named Invincible. They all inevitably end up being destroyed very quickly - by the standards of a fleet where they don't even bother making ships whose systems can stand up to three years of continuous usage because most of them won't last that long anyway.
    • Inverted - When Admiral Lagemann renames the captured kick superbattleship to Invincible, there are several objections against him seemingly invoking the trope. Lagemann explains he's doing the opposite, because he's acknowledged the ship isn't invincible, in fact, it's defenseless. He also points out that it means Alliance bureaucrats can't name any other navy ships Invincible, protecting them from the cursed name.

      Even the mighty superbattleship ends up following this trope later, when the Dancers remotely activate her systems and use her to distract the AI-controlled dark ships, giving Geary's fleet enough time to hide behind a star.
    • Defied. Geary is unwittingly about to invoke the trope and Tanya interrupts him. Geary tries to ask why she did and she simply replies she doesn't want to find out and neither does he.
  • Theme Naming: In-universe, the Alliance bureaucracy appear to have a sense of humor, though perhaps a particularly bland one, when it is revealed that the AI responsible for fleet assignments tend to assign Admirals with similar last names, at least with the same first letter, to a system. Perhaps for ease of filing.
    • The enigma-held star systems that the fleet passes through are all named after some unpleasant version of the afterlife: Limbo, Purgatory, Inferno, Tartarus...
    • A meta example with the novel titles. Word of God is that each novel is titled after a ship that plays a key role in its story. The only exception is Fearless, which he was forced to rename from Furious, as the publisher didn't like that name.
    • There's also a discussion about why battlecruisers and battleships tend to be named after human qualities, and no ship is named after a person (Geary's own Merlonis not, as one might think, named for Merlin but for part of a castle wall). There were several attempts to name ships after real people, but then the senators began arguing about which people should be honored... and the ideas quickly died.
    • Ship classes in the fleet have fairly consistent theme naming. Battleships and battlecruisers are both generally named after human characteristics that fit their combat roles, with the well armored battleships intended to take a beating in defense of their fellow ships named things like Guardian and Magnificent, while the battlecruisers, intended to be the heavy hitters leading the charge, have names such as Dauntless and Furious. The heavy cruisers, shielding the lighter units, are named after defensive structures and armor, such as Merlon and Vambrace. Light cruisers, as an inbetween unit, are named for parts of weapons and armor, like Staff and Kote. Destroyers, the lightest ships, are named after various weapons or projectiles, including Flail and Bolt. The Marines assault transports are named after storms and natural disasters, including Typhoon and Haboob. Finally, the auxiliaries, ship for ship THE most important members of the fleet due to their ability to repair damage and replace expendables from fuel cells to munitions, are named after magical beings, like Tanuki and Witch.
  • This Is My Name on Foreign: In Implacable, the Wooareek refer to Captain Boudreaux as "Farmer." When Geary wonders why, Boudreaux explains that, apparently, that's what his last name means in an Old Earth language (specifically, French). This is yet another proof that the Wooareek are a Higher-Tech Species: their translators are that advanced that they were able to pick up on that.
  • This Is Reality: In Valiant, Geary at one points asks if any of the fleet commanders know who was responsible for attempted sabotage. No one reacts immediately, and Geary reflects that while that might happen in a work of fiction, the real world doesn't work that way.
  • Throwing Down the Gauntlet: A non-heroic example. Commander Benan attempts to do one against Geary after he learns Rione slept with him, forcing Desjani to interrupt him before he can issue the challenge before she's required by regulations to execute him for it. Apparently, this became a common thing during the war and the fleet had to institute the death penalty to get it to stop.
  • Title Drop: The series name is only mentioned once in the main set of six books: Right after Geary manages his closest victory yet, nearly totally out of power, and returning the fleet home.
    • The individual books titles (ships) are mentioned at least once during their respective books and usually have a key part in the story.
  • Together in Death: After Victoria Rione finds her husband in a brain-dead state, she decides to pull off a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the dark ships, knowing that she herself would die in the process. She opts to take a sleeping pill and lie down next to her husband in preparation for death.
  • Token Evil Teammate: While many of the named Alliance senators have their flaws, Wilkes and Gizelle are the only ones without any likable moments or comments so far.
  • Tomato Surprise: The Reveal that Sol doesn't straddle the border between the Alliance and Syndic Space is played out this way.
  • Torture Always Works: Sharply averted; Lieutenant Iger says they never use torture, because it's an unreliable means of getting information. In fact, he distinguishes between "beating them up" and "outright torture," saying that the former isn't quite as unreliable as the latter, but they still never use either. Considering that until Geary came back, the fleet had gotten into the habit of routinely murdering prisoners, this wasn't a decision based on moral concerns.
  • Trapped Behind Enemy Lines: The entire premise of the beginning of the series. Almost the whole Alliance fleet gets ambushed in their attack on the enemy homeworld. In fact, the Syndics believe they have the Alliance fleet SO badly trapped they neglected to defend the system jump point, because everyone has almost stopped using them altogether after they became obsolete.
  • Troperiffic: Well, you've made it this far down the page by now...
  • Trust Password: In Boundless, a Syndic battlecruiser is approaching the Alliance fleet. The battlecruiser sends a message, and it's Michael Geary claiming to have captured the ship and currently being on the run from Syndics. John Geary can't be certain if this is really his grandnephew or a fake. Tanya suggests that he ask Michael something only he would know. John asks him about the "ghost in the network", referring to the glitches programmed into the Geary mansion's computer system by their ancestor Lyn "Ninja" Meltzer. Michael replies correctly, proving that it's really him.
  • Try to Fit That on a Business Card: 'His Excellency Captain Commodore First Rank Stellar Guard of the Fist of the People Earun Tavistorevas, Paramount of the Shield of Sol.' Inverted however, instead of sounding impressive, Geary and the others find it clownish. They simply take to calling him 'Mister Medals' because of his ridiculous Bling of War.
  • Uncanny Valley: When the Enigma Race communicates, they use a computer-generated human avatar. They seem realistic enough until they start talking, and then the combination of tone, expressions, gestures, and syntax becomes extremely off-putting and obviously unnatural. invoked
  • Unequal Pairing: Geary and Desjani. They're pretty much the only people in the entire fleet who realize why they can't be in a relationship. Everyone else, even those who know they're not in a relationship, are either all for it, or joke about it approvingly, much to their equal dismay.
  • Unfortunate Names: In Leviathan, Geary meets an Alliance ground forces major named Problem. So, naturally, when she introduces herself as "Major Problem", Geary starts by asking what's the problem, before being corrected (naturally, the Major has a pained look on her face). General Carabali comments that Problem should get herself busted down to captain.
  • Unfriendly Fire: Captain Kila attempts to kill Geary three times before she is discovered.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Kila who, despite having been saved by Geary's leadership kills fellow Alliance sailors just to oust Geary because he doesn't fight the all-out, Guilt-Free Extermination War way she wants him to.
  • Unwanted False Faith: In the years after his supposed death, Geary's legend developed into a sort of cult-like following, where military commanders admonish each other for what they think Geary would supposedly say about their ideas. It's quite clear that Geary feels extremely uncomfortable with the ardent faith his subordinates have in his flawlessness. It doesn't help that even people like Desjani think he's been sent by the Gods themselves to deliver them unto victory.
    • This also complicates the nature of his command, since his captains have all adhered to the cult surrounding his legend, and have all have mostly exaggerated or distorted views on what they thought Geary was suppose to believe. It becomes hilarious when he catches one belligerent captain about to invoke his name... against him. Because he isn't the legend they've all been led to believe, Geary constantly battles doubts against him that extended hypersleep made him feeble.
  • The Uriah Gambit: Minus the Murder the Hypotenuse undertones though. It becomes increasingly clear throughout Dreadnaught that the First Fleet has been sent out to die by the Alliance government to remove the troublesome situation Geary's mere existence causes (as well as that of the VIP POW's they were ordered to pick up on the way out). Even if they don't die, First Fleet's mission is guaranteed to keep them far, far away from the centers of political power for a long period of time, which in the short term is just as good.
  • Ursine Aliens: The bear-cows.
  • Used Future: Geary notes to himself in the first book that he had expected everything in the future to be clean and shiny. He got this trope instead. Justified, as he's on a damaged warship fighting a ridiculously long and brutal war.
  • UST: Which is less romantic than the people not involved seem to find it.
  • Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The premise of the first book series is modeled on the march of the Ten Thousand.
  • War Refugees: A crisis in Steadfast, as there's a glut of these thanks to the collapse of the Syndicate Worlds.
  • Warts and All: Geary. The way each character reacts to the "real" Geary speaks volumes as to their own character, with some even preferring his real self to the myth.
  • We ARE Struggling Together: Geary finds his fleet always on the verge of The Mutiny despite (and perhaps because of) his legendary status in-universe. They are all Military Maverick suicidally brave Leeroy Jenkins types who only know how to Attack! Attack! Attack!. Geary's cautious methodical Bothering by the Book style drives all of the officers up the wall, no matter how well it works.
  • We Can Rule Together: A rather bizarre, sort-of version done by Geary. He's trying to convince a young CEO (or at least an officer) that both the Alliance and Syndics need to achieve some sort-of peace, and that it's for the greater good that he reveal any information on the aliens. Rione snaps at Geary that this guy is a CEO, and to appeal to his greed for power. Geary suggests that, of course, when the time comes for talks, Geary will need someone he's familiar with to facilitate an agreement. The man instantly perks up.
  • We Have Reserves: Both sides. There are far too few combat veterans in the officer corps because the attrition rate is so high. By the time of Dauntless, the turnover rate of the officer corps is so high both sides are reduced to Death Before Dishonour tactics to keep fighting. To make things even worse, after Geary takes over, his ships that are three years old start falling apart at the seams due to how many corners were cut during construction. Nearly everyone in the fleet was baffled by this, simply because the rate of attrition was so high that ships simply didn't survive that long. By the end of the original series, however, this trope is subverted by the Syndics. Geary beats them in so many battles and destroys so many of their ships that they don't have enough reserves to replace them. By the time Beyond the Frontier begins, the few Syndic fleets that are still around are tiny and are comprised mainly of light ships.
    • The bear-cows. Their ships lack escape pods because their leaders don't give a crap about the underlings. Only the herd matters. The only thing that could possibly count as one is about half the size of an Alliance destroyer and is likely filled with herd leaders. Their system defenses involve a planetoid space station firing around 900 giant missiles at the enemy, and those missiles are piloted. When the marines try to board their superbattleship, the crew puts up a fierce resistance. Any bear-cow who is wounded is immediately finished off by the others, likely to spare it from being eaten alive (they assume any predator wants that, and humans with their incisors are recognized as predators). Anyone captured can (and will) instantly kill itself.
  • Wham Line: Two occur in quick succession in Guardian, when Rione reveals that the Dancers who accompanied the Alliance fleet back to Varandal have somewhere they want to go within human space, and shows the grand council a word in one of the ancient languages of humanity.
    "What does it say?” Senator Navarro asked in amazement. “Kansas." "What?" "The ancient word is Kansas," Rione explained. "We asked in every way we could, and the Dancers insisted in every way that they could that they must go to Kansas." "Where the hell is that?" Costa demanded. "I've never heard of a star named Kansas." "We located Kansas," Rione said. "It's not a star, or a planet. It's a place on a planet, a name for a province or region on that planet." "What planet and what star?" Senator Navarro said. "Old Earth," Rione replied. "Sol Star System."
  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Geary starts saying that in Guardian when the Dauntless enters the hypernet gate to get to Sol, only for Desjani to sharply cut him off and tell him in no uncertain terms that he better not finish that question.
  • What Did I Do Last Night?: Rione has to ask Geary this the morning after a drunken BSOD upon learning her husband may be alive. The answer to that being that she stormed into Geary's stateroom, stripped herself while screaming at him before passing out. At that point Geary covered her up before tucking her into the bed and going to sleep on the couch.
  • What Did You Expect When You Named It ____?: Geary discusses the naming of the battlecruiser 'Invincible' with one of his subordinates, who observes that ships named 'Invincible' (high turnover rates mean the Alliance military gets by using the same set of a few hundred ship names for all the new ships produced) tend to have an even shorter combat life than most. Sure enough, the new 'Invincible' turns out to be a bullet magnet, but subverts the trope in that it narrowly escapes destruction as the most damaged (surviving) ship in the entire fleet.
    • The previous Invincible barely survived the Mutiny with Captain Falco, and they wound up scuttling it anyway since it was too battle-damaged to save. Geary and the rest of the cast were amazed that it could even move let alone have enough of the hull intact to keep the survivors alive.
    • The ship Arrogant becomes the first to disobey a direct order.
    • Dreadnaught leads a hopelessly outnumbered charge into the enemy to protect its compatriots. Although, averted later as Jane tells John that when she ordered the charge, she was scared out of her wits.
  • What Does He See in Her?: In the fifth book, Geary finds out that a lot of the captains have been wondering this about Rione (although most of them were careful not to give him any sign of it). Later, more of them begin to recognize what he might have seen after she takes the responsibility to release the fail-safe device for the hypernet gates to the Syndicate Worlds in order to prevent more catastrophic collapses.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: The Grand council’s military advisor Admrial Otropa is never seen after their first meeting (nor is the antagonistic senator Gizelle). Given how Otropa and Geary antagonized each other during their first meeting it’s likely the council simply kept him away to avoid a repeat whenever they met with Geary again, while Gizelle may have been among the many senators voted out of office after the war.
    • Commander Vebos, a major thorn in Geary's side in the first book, is never heard from again after being transferred to Orion.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: The spider wolves. The Alliance forces learn to respect them, but civilians are less appreciative. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the bear cows were very cute, and Geary was forced to kill a lot of them.
  • With Due Respect: Used, discussed, and lampshaded at various points.
  • Worthy Opponent: The only time Geary finds himself respecting a Syndicate is when a single enterprising cruiser commander takes advantage of Geary's glory obsessed fleet to attack the auxiliary ships they carelessly left defenseless. It doesn't work thanks to Geary's own quicker thinking, but the fact that it nearly worked makes Geary kick himself for not realizing the plan sooner and offer admiration to the cruiser that nearly pulled it off.
  • Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Geary is horrified the Alliance kills POWs and Syndic civilians en masse. And his enraged rant about how they will never do it again so long as he is command is a slap in the face to all his officers.
  • Writers Suck: Captain Desjani mentions in casual conversation she considered becoming a literary agent rather than joining the fleet, but "taking that job would have meant I had to work with writers, and you know what they're like."
  • You Are in Command Now: Geary, obviously, but also Colonel Carabali when the Marine general is murdered with the rest of the high command. Several other officers wind up in charge of battleships or battlecruisers after Geary relieves their superiors for treason, incompetence, or cowardice.
  • You Can't Go Home Again: Geary knows everyone he knew is dead and his homeworld is probably radically changed.
  • You Shall Not Pass!: Geary pulls one a hundred years before the story begins at the first battle of the Forever War. This leads to the Alliance making him into a demigod-like war hero to rally around. The problem was that he was in survival sleep in an escape pod with a damaged beacon.
    • The Seventh Battleship Division stays behind during the retreat from Lakota, giving the Syndics hell as they go.
    • Geary, the fleet, and the Dancers are prepared to die to the last ship and crewmember at Unity Alternate to prevent any of the Defender Fleet AI ships from escaping the system.


Top