The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught (42 page)

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Authors: Jack Campbell

BOOK: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught
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“Half an hour to intercept of the freighter by the task force, Captain,” Lieutenant Casque said.
“Very w—” Desjani broke off, staring at her display.
Geary did the same, barely suppressing a curse.
“They blew it up,” Casque reported as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying.
On Geary’s display, the neat symbol representing the enigma freighter had been replaced by a spreading cloud of dustlike debris. It had happened two hours ago, but the force of the event still felt immediate. “How the hell did a freighter blow up with that intensity?”
“Run an analysis,” Desjani ordered her bridge team. “Ancestors preserve us,” she added to Geary. “They self-destructed their ship full of their own people fleeing that installation. Is there anything they won’t do to keep us from learning anything about them?”
“I’m starting to wonder.” Somehow, he wasn’t surprised when new alerts sounded on the display. Fixed defenses closest to the installation had launched kinetic projectiles, whose trajectories were clearly aimed not at any Alliance ships but at the installation itself, itself still more than thirty light minutes distant or six hours’ travel time at point one light speed. That volley had barely been detected when the image of the installation itself smeared and burst outward. “They self-destructed the installation, and they launched a bombardment to pulverize whatever is left from that.”
“Charban was right, though it looks like the aliens didn’t want to risk waiting to blow the place until we had people down there and might have already learned something. What do we do now?” Desjani asked. “Head for one of the inhabited planets?”
“Please do not,” Rione suddenly said. She and Charban had come back onto the bridge unnoticed until then. “I am very much afraid of what they would do if we tried to approach one of those worlds.”
“They wouldn’t—” Desjani began, then closed her eyes. “Maybe they would.”
“What do you think, General Charban?” Geary asked.
“I agree with my fellow emissary, Admiral.”
“It’s technically not our fault if they kill themselves,” Desjani grumbled. “And, no, I’m not prepared to argue that point with the living stars when I face them. But what else do we do? They have us checkmated. Either they’ll blow us and themselves to hell with hypernet gates, or they’ll blow themselves to hell if they can’t stop us from learning anything. I prefer the second option if we have a choice, but either way, we learn nothing.”
Geary exhaled slowly, thinking. “All right. We stay on course for the installation. Maybe something survived the self-destruct and will survive the impact of that bombardment.”
Some time later, a short message came in from the task force, Captain Badaya looking dissatisfied. “We’ll continue on course to examine the debris field in case there’s anything worthwhile left, then move to rejoin the fleet, Admiral.”
 
 
THE
remnants of the installation were too badly torn up to reveal anything beyond the basic composition of what it had been constructed of. Carabali had advised against sending personnel down to the surface of the moon, arguing that more traps might be undetonated and waiting for human presence to further destroy the already-mangled ruins. But uncrewed probes found nothing, even the size and shapes of rooms in the installation hard to determine because of the level of destruction.
Captain Smythe called in with an engineer’s perspective. “They must build things with an eye to being able to totally self-destruct. You can’t just annihilate a structure this badly by setting off a few charges. You need to have a lot of explosives or other destructive materials, and they need to be placed right. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the structures contain built-in charges.”
“Isn’t that extremely hazardous?” Geary asked.
“Says the man who’s riding a ship loaded with weaponry, dangerous circuitry, unstable fuel cells, and a power core that can blow it into tiny pieces? And who’s doing this through space, an environment totally hostile to human life? It’s what we’re used to, Admiral. They may be used to living inside walls packed with explosives.” Smythe brightened. “They might have some extremely stable compounds that require just the right means of detonation. I’d love to have a look at that sort of thing.”
“If we find any, I’ll let you know. Do you think their cities might be built like that?”
“It’s possible. Though placing enough nukes at the proper intervals would accomplish the same purpose.”
The task force had reached the expanding cloud of debris that had been an alien freighter and slowed down to conduct a careful examination of it. When his message finally reached Geary, Badaya seemed to be in inexplicably high spirits considering the failure of the task force’s mission to capture the freighter, but his first words explained his happiness. “Admiral, for once the aliens failed to totally destroy everything.
Dragon
found a partial body. At least we finally know what they look like. I have to give Commander Bradamont full credit for realizing that the aliens might well garb themselves in clothing that we’d consider stealth material. She took
Dragon
around the edges of the debris field from the freighter, looking for cool patches among the debris, and found what seems to be about a one-half-intact body that was somehow partially shielded from the blast that destroyed the freighter.”
An image appeared next to Badaya. Geary flinched, not in revulsion at the alien itself but at the state of the body. Explosive decompression on top of the damage done by the destruction of the freighter had left gory remnants. Still, he could make out what seemed to be a tough skin, with patches of thin scales in a few places. The crushed skull still had a small snout visible. In life, the enigma must have been lean and long, so skinny that it looked to human eyes as if it had been stretched out by someone pulling on both ends. “Make sure medical staff and our civilian experts see this,” he told the communications watch, then called the fleet’s chief medical officer.
“I assume you want to look at this in person,” Geary began. “Where should I have
Dragon
’s shuttle deliver it?”
“
Tsunami
, please, Admiral. They have a particularly good surgeon on there who has some autopsy experience. That’s also the ship carrying the, um, experts on intelligent nonhumans. How long until we see it?”
“They’re forwarding scans to us, but it will take close to a day for the task force to rejoin us so you can physically examine the remains, Doctor.” Another call, this to the much more distant
Illustrious
. “Captain Badaya, my compliments to you and Commander Bradamont on a job well done. As soon as your task force rejoins the formation I want
Dragon
to shuttle those remains to
Tsunami
.”
Finally, they had found something. Perhaps his prayers had been at least partially answered.
 
 
GEARY
was in his stateroom when Badaya called again as his task force rejoined the rest of the fleet, the ships returning to their places in the larger formation. “Sorry I couldn’t get that freighter for you, Admiral, but at least we got that partial body. Ugly, aren’t they?”
“It’s hard to tell with all the damage to it,” Geary said.
“That’s a point. No major problems to report, but I’d appreciate it if you’d have a stern talk with
Invincible
’s commanding officer.”
“Now what?”
“Captain Vente isn’t taking it well that this is my division. He keeps making digs about me being junior to him, so he should be in charge. During this operation, he kept balking at orders to show his unhappiness that I was in command of the task force instead of him.”
That wasn’t a surprise to hear. “He hasn’t done anything justifying a formal reprimand?” Which might also justify relieving him of command if it was a serious enough infraction.
“Unfortunately, no,” Badaya said, twisting his mouth in disgust. “Vente’s got admiral’s insignia in his eyes, and he’s politically smart enough to avoid going over the line while he’s getting his major command ticket punched before he returns to headquarters and his hoped-for promotion.”
“Somebody should have told him that promotions have hit a brick wall.”
“Ha! At least as far as he’s concerned, right, Admiral? But I’ve dealt with plenty of Vente’s type in my time. They always think their connections will help them get what others can’t.”
Bracing himself for an unpleasant but necessary task, Geary called Vente. Nearly twenty minutes later, long enough to annoy Geary but not long enough to justify chewing him out for that as well, Vente’s image and frown appeared standing in Geary’s stateroom. “Captain Vente, I need to emphasize for you that I do not disrupt command relationships or positions based purely on seniority. Captain Badaya has successfully and competently led his division for some time, and he will continue doing so.”
Vente’s expression soured even more. “That is contrary to regulations.”
“No, it is not, or you’d be citing the relevant regulations to me right now. Let me be clear that I respect the service and honor of all my officers, and I will not allow any of my officers to be treated in any manner that reflects disrespect for them.”
“Admiral Chelak—”
“Is not in command of this fleet. Have I made my expectations clear, Captain Vente?”
“Yes . . . Admiral.”
After Vente left, Geary ordered the fleet’s support systems to provide him with more frequent and detailed updates on
Invincible
’s status.
Give me a reason to relieve this man of command. Anything that I can justify. And let’s hope it happens soon.
 
 
THE
medical representatives were looking around the fleet conference room with ill-concealed curiosity. Attendance at the conferences had been increasingly restricted in recent decades, as the conferences degenerated into freewheeling political contests to decide fleet commanders and vote on courses of action. By the time Geary was awakened from survival sleep, it was rare for anyone but the commanding officers of the fleet’s ships to attend such meetings. But Geary had imposed much more discipline, and the conferences no longer featured the same fireworks, which probably explained the disappointment the doctors were showing.
The surgeon who had been in charge of the alien autopsy was giving a presentation, accompanied by virtual images that would have been stomach-turning for nonphysicians even if the images hadn’t been three-dimensional and as real-looking as if actual body parts were floating over the conference table. “We can’t be certain why this specimen survived as well as it did, but an analysis run using injury re-creation software rates as a high probability that the individual represented here was not physically aboard the freighter when it was destroyed. A reanalysis of records from the last moments of the freighter’s existence identified a stealthy object being ejected from the freighter several seconds before it exploded.”
“An escape pod?” Duellos asked in surprise.
“Very likely. The distance and the structure of the pod itself would have shielded the occupant a bit.” The surgeon indicated various organs. “Enough of the neck survived to identify a dual breathing system. We believe this skin flap would close, diverting breathing intake from this multichambered lung to these organs. They were very delicate, and not much has survived, but we think it likely that they worked the same way gills do.”
“Amphibious in every sense of the word!” Dr. Setin exclaimed, pleased that his experts had called that one.
“Most likely,” the surgeon responded. “There’s not enough left of the eyes to be certain what wavelengths they were optimized for. It may have had six appendages, though how many of those are arms and how many legs is impossible to say from the state of this sample. We can identify the probable functions of most of the organs we found, but there’s not much of those. It’s clearly a carbon-based life-form, similar to our own basic makeup, and oxygen-breathing. The brain was very badly damaged. We can approximate the size, but identifying functional areas will be extremely difficult. One thing that does seem apparent is that the brain lacks bilateral symmetry. In more primitive alien life-forms that we’ve seen on human-colonized worlds, this translates into a lack of right- or left-handedness.”
“Can you tell what it eats?” someone asked.
“No. The digestive system is completely gone except for a few scraps. It could be a carnivore, a vegetarian, or an omnivore.”
“Did enough of the fingers remain to see if it had fingernails or claws?” Dr. Shwartz asked.
“One of the fingers was intact enough to see a hard structure on the end, sort of like a conical fingernail covering the tip.”
“That could be used to kill prey, or to dig up vegetables,” Shwartz commented.
Commander Lomand,
Titan
’s commanding officer, had been listening intently and gestured for attention. “Sir, you spoke of gills. You’re certain that this creature had water-breathing capability?”
The surgeon nodded. “Yes.”
“We’ve seen some of where they live,” Dr. Setin interjected. “Towns and cities that straddle the coastline rather than sitting on one side or the other. Water is an amazing substance, you know. Incredibly useful. Oxygen is a powerful source of fuel, so there’s no surprise in seeing another highly evolved species using it. And carbon is immensely flexible. They’re all tailor-made for supporting complex life. Most of the advanced life-forms we’ve found are carbon-based and oxygen-breathing.”

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