The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible (3 page)

Geary tried to grasp that level of population density and failed. “Where do they get food?”

“The buildings, Admiral. Some of them, or some of the floors in them, are vertical farms. You can see the crops on almost all of the roofs.”

“How many of these creatures are there?”

Iger almost shrugged, then caught himself. Junior officers did not shrug at admirals. “The planet is a little smaller than Earth-standard, sir, and has less land area. But it depends a great deal upon how large they are. As individuals, I mean. If they are roughly comparable to humans . . .” Iger looked to one side of the screen as he ran some numbers. “Something on the order of twenty billion.”

“Twenty billion? On one planet of that size?”

“If they’re roughly the same size as we are,” Lieutenant Iger said.

“Let me know when you learn more,” Geary ordered, then sat back again, rubbing his forehead. “What am I forgetting?” he asked Desjani.

“The fortresses,” she answered.

“I haven’t forgotten the damned fortresses. They’re impressive as hell, but they’re still targets in fixed orbits. We’ll throw enough rocks at them to—” Geary stopped as Desjani shook her head. “What?”

“You’re right,” she said. “They are targets. So why were they built? Why are they still here? Why hasn’t someone else blown them away already? I loathe the enigmas, but I know they’re smart enough to throw rocks at minor planet-sized targets. Yet whatever lives here has gone to tremendous effort to build those fortresses. Have you noticed how few asteroids are in this star system? They must have used most of their asteroids to build those things, and, unless they’re simply crazy, they shouldn’t have done that if the fortresses were just targets.”

Geary stared at the star system display. “They’ve got a defense against rocks?”

“We would be wise to assume so, Admiral.”

“Let’s find out. What’s the biggest rock aboard
Dauntless
?”

Desjani grinned. “We’ve got a five-hundred-kilo kinetic round.”

“Can we launch it toward that closest fortress without endangering any of our other ships?”

She ran the trajectory, then nodded. “Permission to fire?”

“Launch it,” Geary ordered.

The kinetic round was simply a large slug of solid metal, heavy enough that even
Dauntless
jerked slightly when the object was launched at tremendous velocity on a trajectory aimed at the nearest alien fortress, the same fortress that had sent the attack force against Geary’s fleet. “Sixty-five minutes to impact,” Desjani reported, still smiling.

At least now she was in a good mood.

If he could have looked out a window in the side of
Dauntless
, if such a window had existed instead of sensors feeding into virtual windows and displays through the ship, and if
Dauntless
’s bridge had been near the outside of the hull instead of buried within it, the stars outside wouldn’t have shown any sign of moving. If Geary called up an image of
Dauntless
seen from one of the other ships of the fleet, the large human ship would have seemed very tiny as it hung apparently motionless in space. There would have been no indications that the battle cruiser was moving at a velocity of point zero five light speed, or about fifteen thousand kilometers per second. Unthinkably fast on the surface of a planet, that speed felt slow among the vast distances between planets. If humans had been forced to use such velocities to travel between stars, the voyages would have required years and decades.

And he wouldn’t have found himself stuck out here, much farther than any humans had ever gone before, dealing with another alien species that didn’t seem to be thrilled at the opportunity to meet humanity face-to-face.

At least the Alliance government couldn’t claim that he hadn’t followed orders. He had definitely found the limit of space in this direction controlled by the enigma race.

Geary sat watching the fleet re-form around
Dauntless
, the other ships using the flagship as their point of reference. He took comfort in the familiarity and the expertise the ship movements demonstrated.

“Excuse me, Admiral,” Desjani said.

He tried not to flinch, jarred out of a momentary sense of respite and wondering what he might have forgotten. “What?”

“There’s something about those superbattleships these aliens have. Have you noticed their propulsion isn’t proportionate to their mass?”

Geary glanced at her. “Less than in one of our battleships?”

“Yes.” Desjani pointed at her own display. “Our systems estimate they maneuver compared to our battleships the way our battleships maneuver compared to our battle cruisers. That is, they need a while to get speed up, and they turn like pigs after a big meal.”

He looked at where the massive alien warships, light-hours distant, were still orbiting, oblivious to the Alliance fleet, but which would surely turn to accelerate on intercepts with the Alliance ships as soon as the light from the arrival of the human fleet reached them. Then Geary looked at each of the jump points that offered escape from this star system, where the massive fortresses the size of minor planets orbited like deadly prison guards. “We can outrun them, but there’s no place to run.”

“Yes, but . . .” Desjani made an uncharacteristically indecisive gesture. “Those warships are designed that way for a reason. Some way they’re employed. How would you use something like that?”

Geary shook his head, imagining an encounter with one of those superbattleships. “It would go through the fleet like a knife through butter. We couldn’t stop it. Is that what they’re designed to do? Charge into and through anything?” Another comm alert chimed. “Excuse me, Captain Desjani.” The image of the fleet’s senior doctor reappeared before Geary.

Dr. Nasr beamed with satisfaction. “We have a partial reconstruction of these creatures, Admiral, with a high degree of confidence as to accuracy.”

“How do you stick the pieces back together?” Geary asked, hoping that the answer wouldn’t upset his stomach too badly.

“There are various—Oh, you mean this time? We haven’t had time to get the real remains and manipulate them. Those are still in quarantine. But we had virtual copies made and were able to play with those until we fit them together.” The doctor made fitting together small pieces of once-living creatures sound like a fascinating pastime.

Next to the surgeon, a large image appeared.

Geary stared, speechless for a moment. Finally recovering, he tapped a control to forward the image. “Tanya, this is what they look like.”

She gave him a curious glance, then sat looking for a while at the image Geary had sent before she could say anything. “You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Teddy bears.” Desjani pointed at the chubby, furry image. “We were attacked by teddy bears?”

The creature, at least in this virtual reconstruction, was about a meter tall and covered with short, curly fur. The virtual image didn’t display any blood or exposed internal body parts, just blurred filler in sometimes large sections where needed. The creature, with gleaming eyes set amid chubby cheeks, a shovel snout that seemed more cowlike than bearlike, and rounded ears above the skull, appeared to be . . . cute. “They’re carnivores?” Geary asked the doctor.

“No. Herbivores.”

“Herbivores?”

“Cows,” Desjani said in a hollow voice. “Cute little cows. Homicidal, cute little teddy bear-cows who build giant war machines.”

Geary took another look at the image, his imagination supplying a malicious glint to the adorable eyes set in the chubby face of the teddy bear-cow. “Forward this to our experts on intelligent alien species,” he told the doctor. The experts hadn’t actually known anything about any real intelligent alien species until this fleet had penetrated enigma space recently, but they were still the best thing he had available. “And to Lieutenant Iger in Intelligence, please.”

By the time he could watch the large kinetic projectile that
Dauntless
had launched reach the nearest alien fortress, the fleet had moved another three light-minutes farther away. Thus he watched the events unfold almost ten minutes after they actually took place.

The five-hundred-kilogram chunk of metal, shaped like an ancient image of a rocket in case it needed that streamlined shape to be dropped through atmosphere onto a planetary target, arced down toward the alien fortress. Traveling at thousands of kilometers per second, it held tremendous kinetic energy, which would be released on impact with its target.

But thousands of kilometers short of that target, the path of the projectile began bending quickly, so that it eventually raced harmlessly past the fortress, a clean miss.

“How did they do that?” Geary asked.

“Good question,” Desjani replied. “Let’s hope the sensors picked up enough to figure out the answer.”

“Yeah.”

“And we have to discuss whatever the sensors did or didn’t see with different people for different insights,” she added.

“I’m going to have to hold a meeting, aren’t I?”

“I’m afraid so.”

The main alien armada would be seeing the light of the human fleet’s arrival in about another two hours, doubtless at the same time as they received messages from the orbiting alien fortress alerting them to the presence of intruders in this star system. Closer alien warships would already have seen the human fleet, but the light showing their reactions wouldn’t reach Geary’s ships for hours yet.

He had little doubt what those reactions would be. However, at the moment, the danger of further combat with these aliens was as distant as it would be for the remainder of their time in this system. There wouldn’t be a better time for sharing his plans and receiving any inputs from the fleet’s ship captains.

Geary sent out the announcement, half-wishing he could just fight the aliens again instead, and half-fearing that all of his options from here on would be bad ones.

TWO

THE
conference room could really hold only a dozen people or so, but the meeting software allowed it to “expand” to fit the number of individuals attending meetings virtually. Geary looked down the long length of the table, which had apparently expanded in size to match the numbers of officers present. The commanding officers of every ship in the fleet looked back at him, along with other individuals such as Lieutenant Iger, the fleet’s chief medical officer Captain Nasr, both General Charban and Emissary Rione, and some of the civilian experts on intelligent aliens.

A few others were hidden from sight and hearing by the rest of the participants except for Geary and Desjani. Those few, picked representatives from the former prisoners of war now berthed on
Mistral
and
Typhoon
, were being allowed to watch and listen to the proceedings. If their many high-ranking and self-important peers on those same assault transports knew, they would all clamor for seats (and voices) in the meeting as well, and that simply wasn’t going to happen.

Far too many of the meetings held in here since Geary had assumed command of the fleet had involved far too much drama for Geary’s taste. During the century he had been in survival sleep, fleet conferences had degenerated into political free-for-alls in which fleet commanders vied for support from their subordinates. When he was found and awakened, it was to discover that he, Captain Geary, was by far the most senior captain in the Alliance fleet, with a date of rank nearly a century before. That hadn’t mattered to him, but it had meant that when Admiral Bloch died, Geary had been the next in line to command the fleet by seniority, by Bloch’s own last command, and by the requirements of what Geary saw as his duty. Enough of the then-commanders of the fleet’s ships had been swayed by one or more of those factors to agree to Geary’s assuming command. The entire process, of not just soliciting advice from subordinates but of cultivating their support for his own position in command, had struck Geary as outrageously wrong. Back then, he had only dimly grasped how badly a century of bloody war had battered the structure of the fleet and the nature of its officers.

He was fixing that. Slowly and all-too-often painfully, but meetings now tended to be much more professional. “My first order of business,” Geary said, “is to express my appreciation for the skill with which the fleet fought our last engagement. Well done.”

He would have had a great deal of trouble saying that if Captain Vente of what had been the latest
Invincible
(but was now a rapidly expanding ball of dust following the controlled detonation of its power core) had been present. However, as Vente was no longer a ship’s commanding officer, he had no right to attend this meeting. Right now Vente was sitting in a spare stateroom on
Tanuki
oblivious to this conference. “We took some losses, too,” Geary continued. “May the ancestors of the dead welcome them with the honor they deserve.”

Captain Badaya scowled, his eyes on the table’s surface. “We’ll avenge
Invincible
. Perhaps the Alliance will finally stop giving that ill-omened name to new battle cruisers.”

“It shouldn’t happen again,” Captain Vitali of
Daring
pointed out. “They’ve stopped building new ships since the war ended. There are no new battle cruisers under construction to give that name.”

Geary’s eyes went to meet the gaze of Captain Smythe, who made no gesture or expression but nonetheless conveyed his understanding of the same thing that Geary was thinking. There were new warships being constructed by the Alliance government if what Smythe and his staff had uncovered was true, but that fact was being kept secret from Geary and everyone else in this fleet. Why that was so was just one of the questions Geary had to resolve.

For now, it was best to get the conversation onto other tracks. “I want to make special note of the performance of
Orion
in the recent engagement.”

Commander Shen nodded gruffly in acknowledgment of Geary’s words as the other officers offered approving words and gestures. Most of the other officers, anyway. A few, perhaps out of lingering loyalty to the disgraced Captain Numos, kept their expressions neutral. And Captain Jane Geary seemed to be trying to suppress unhappiness at seeing Shen singled out.

“My crew deserves the credit,” Shen said, his habitually dissatisfied expression in full force. Shen was no diplomat and seemed oblivious to the idea of currying favor with his superiors, but
Orion
had fought well in the recent engagement, fought well for the first time in Geary’s experience with this fleet. Perhaps Desjani was right and, despite his rough edges, Shen would be the commander to finally turn
Orion
around.

“The second item,” Geary continued, “is what we know about how the aliens diverted that rock we fired at their orbital fortress. The answer at this point is nothing. You’ve all been given full access to the sensor readings. I’d like to hear your thoughts.”

Commander Neeson of
Implacable
spoke up first. “I thought initially that it might be magnetics. That is, a very powerful, highly focused magnetic field projected to divert anything fired at that fortress as long as it was the right kind of metal. But our sensors should have spotted a magnetic field that strong.”

Captain Hiyen of
Reprisal
nodded judiciously. “Yet the activity matched what we would have seen if that were the case. Which means it was something that acted like such a magnetic field. Perhaps it would be equally effective against nonmagnetic substances.”

“And this something would be . . . ?” Captain Duellos of
Inspire
asked.

“I have no idea,” Hiyen replied. “All I can say with confidence is that whatever it is must require an immense amount of power to generate.”

“I agree. More power than any ship could produce,” Neeson said.

Captain Tulev nodded, his voice somber. “So now we know why that fortress is so large. It must be to carry the power generators necessary to produce its defensive mechanism.”

Since the death of Captain Cresida, Neeson and Hiyen were two of the best surviving scientific theorists among the fleet’s officers. Having heard from the theorists, Geary looked to Captain Smythe. “What do the engineers think?”

Smythe spread his hands in a gesture of ignorance. “The consensus among my engineers is that the aliens can’t do that without, as the commander remarked, projecting very strong and localized magnetic fields. Which they did not. Therefore, in a practical sense, we have no idea how they did it.”

General Carabali, commander of the Marines embarked with the fleet, suddenly hit the table with her fist. “However they do it, their primary planet must have the same defense.”

Everyone looked at her, then Desjani nodded back. “It must. Good thing we didn’t waste any kinetic projectiles on a retaliatory bombardment.”

General Charban was still staring at Carabali. “That kind of defensive system would be invaluable to us. To render our planets invulnerable to bombardment from space . . .”

He didn’t have to finish the thought. During the century-long war with the Syndicate Worlds, uncounted numbers of human beings had died in such bombardments, and entire worlds had been devastated.

“How do we get it?” Rione asked, her voice harsh in the silence that had followed Charban’s statement. “I agree. It would be of incalculable value to us. But how do we get it? They won’t even talk to us. There’s been no response to any of our messages.”

“A raid?” Captain Badaya asked, but then answered his own question. “Even if we didn’t have to worry about them launching another several hundred of those suicide craft against us when we approached that fortress, how do we knock down the surface defenses when our bombardment can be deflected? How do we land shuttles when they might also be tossed around by that defense system?”

Carabali shook her head. “Any group of shuttles trying to reach the surface of one of those fortresses would be annihilated by the weapons we can spot on the surface. If the fleet can’t reduce those defenses, there’s no way to get any Marines into those things. Not alive, anyway.”

“What about full stealth gear?” Badaya pressed.

“I don’t have enough of that to get a decent force in place. Even if they all made it down in one piece, it would be like throwing a thimble of sand at a mountain.” Carabali paused, frowning. “We also don’t know whether or not our stealth capabilities will work against the sensors these aliens use. Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t.”

Badaya grimaced. “The only way to find out would be to try.”

General Carabali’s frown darkened into a thundercloud, but before she could erupt, Geary broke in. “I’m sure that Captain Badaya isn’t suggesting that we try. He’s just noting that we have no other means of being certain what the aliens can do. An actual assault in the face of those uncertainties would be a measure of last resort, and we’re a long ways from such a point.”

Carabali relaxed a bit, while Badaya seemed briefly startled at the reaction to his statement. “Yes. Of course that’s what I meant.”

“We do know one thing,” Tulev pointed out. “The enigmas have been neighbors to these other aliens for unknown years. But they do not have this device. Our bombardments of enigma targets went home without hindrance. The enigmas, with all of their tricks and deceptions, with all of their worms and Trojan horses, with all of their combat capabilities, have not been able to acquire this thing.”

“Maybe if we tell them that we’re enemies of the enigmas—” Badaya began.

“We’ve tried,” Rione broke in. “No response.”

Badaya looked annoyed at the interruption by Rione, then focused back on Geary. “Admiral, what do we know about the species here?”

“We know they’re bloodthirsty bastards,” Captain Vitali replied. “Just like the enigmas.”

Geary tapped a control, and the image of the reconstructed alien appeared over the table, the image seeming to be directly in front of every individual in the meeting.

There was a pause. Someone laughed. Someone else cursed. “Teddy bears?” Commander Neeson finally demanded.

“Teddy bear-cows,” Desjani corrected.

Dr. Nasr frowned. “That’s not medically accurate. Their DNA is unrelated to bears or cows. However, from the pieces we found and the use of them to reconstruct one of the creatures, we are certain that they are herbivores, they are intelligent, and their hands are suited to fine motor manipulation.”

“Wait,” Badaya said. “Herbivores? We were attacked by . . .” He looked at Desjani. “Cows?”

“Maybe they’re slaves of some kind of predator that sent them on that suicide attack,” a cruiser commander suggested.

Lieutenant Iger shook his head. “We’ve finally cracked the video system they use. So far we’ve seen a lot of images of these creatures but nothing that even hints at anything that dominates them or is an equal. Our observation of the primary inhabited planet also shows nothing consistent with the existence of a ruling predator class. Everything is uniform. Every building. Every square meter of land. There’s no real variation in anything. A predator ruling class would have open areas around special structures.”

Duellos frowned at Iger. “No variation? A monolithic culture?”

“That’s what it looks like, sir.”

“What’s your estimate of the planetary population given what we’ve learned about these creatures?” Geary asked.

“At least thirty billion, Admiral. That’s the lowest possible estimate.” Iger heard the gasps of astonishment and looked around defiantly. “They’re packed in. Shoulder to shoulder. Everywhere.”

“Herd animals.” This time everyone looked at Professor Shwartz, one of the civilian experts. “Herd animals,” she repeated. “Herbivores. In the videos Lieutenant Iger has been able to access, we always see them in crowds, even when there is extra space in a room. They cluster together by choice. They are comfortable being in a tight group and uncomfortable being separate.”

Badaya shook his head. “That may be, but cows? Attacking us?”

“You think herbivores pose no threat?” Shwartz asked. “They can be very dangerous. One of the deadliest animals on Old Earth was the hippopotamus. Others were . . . elephants. And . . . rhinoceros . . . es. Rhinoceri? The point is, all herbivores. But if they thought they or their herds were threatened, they attacked. Fast, determined, and deadly. Weaponry with sufficient hitting power could stop them. Nothing else could.”

“That does sound like the engagement we just fought,” Duellos admitted.

“And it fits the lack of communication,” Shwartz added. “They aren’t interested in talking. They don’t negotiate because to them, any foe wants to kill them. Predators. You don’t negotiate with predators! You either kill them, or they kill you.”

“But they would negotiate among themselves,” Neeson suggested. “Or would they? Herd animals. They just do what the leader says, don’t they?”

“At least thirty billion,” Charban murmured, his voice getting picked up by the software and broadcast clearly. “What happens when the herd animals kill off all of the predators? The herds just get bigger and bigger.”

“Why didn’t they starve?” Badaya demanded.

“Why didn’t humans starve when their population on Old Earth went from thousands to millions to billions? We were intelligent. We learned how to produce more food. A lot more food. And these are intelligent herbivores.”