Dauntless

Dauntless is a science fiction novel by the American writer Jack Campbell, published in 2006. It is the first book of The Lost Fleet series.

The Alliance has been at war with the Syndics for a hundred years, and the novel opens with its fleet stranded deep inside enemy territory: the ships are weakened, the crews are exhausted and demoralised, and all of them want to get home. The fleet's fate ends up resting on Captain Black Jack Geary, a man who was presumed dead long ago and who emerges from a century of survival hibernation to discover that his name has become a legend among the people he is rejoining. Circumstances force him into taking command, which means he has to find a way to inspire battle-hardened men and women who have been fighting for longer than he has been awake, or else face annihilation at the hands of the enemy pursuing them. The novel is the first of a series about that voyage home and the war it is fought through.

Campbell writes military science fiction built around fleet tactics and the problems of command, and the series continues through several further novels about the same fleet.