The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Leviathan (28 page)

But Geary had no trouble spotting the explosion which, from its intensity, could only mark the destruction of a battle cruiser, as well as lesser detonations that heralded the deaths of heavy cruisers and destroyers. The fleet’s sensors were still trying to evaluate the outcome, who had lost what, when the Dancers ripped through the remains of destroyed ships to hammer the dark ships again.

The formations diverged, finally giving Geary a clear look.

“
Mistral
is all right,” Desjani said. The assault transport was still braking, now being overtaken by the fast-moving fields of wreckage from the shattered warships that had been pursuing her.

“We lost
Motte
,” Geary said as the report of the heavy cruisers’ loss came in. “As well as
Moulinet
,
Remise
,
Mause
,
Spitfire
, and
Skyraider
.” Two light cruisers and three destroyers. “Lots of damage to
Dragon
,
Incredible
, and
Implacable
.” Those three battle cruisers seemed to attract a lot of hits in every battle.

One blessing was that in a bow-on engagement, there had been few hits on propulsion and maneuvering systems. None of the damaged Alliance warships would be unable to keep up with their fellows.

Unfortunately, that was also true of the dark ships.

On the positive side, one of the dark battle cruisers was gone and the other three had been damaged enough to break off their attack. The dark ships had also lost two more heavy cruisers, another light cruiser, and four more destroyers.

“If they hadn’t veered off their attack vector, they would have been wiped out,” Desjani said, her right hand forming a fist that she rapped against her seat in frustration. “It looks like they tried to shift targets at the last instant to the ships in Delta One, then to the Dancers.”

“I bet they did,” Geary said, studying the results of the engagement replayed in very slow motion. “That was their fix to what we did at Bhavan, to allow last-moment retargeting outside normal parameters. But that meant in this engagement they ended up losing their chances at a lot of shots by shifting targets too often and too easily.”

He grimaced as he looked over the results, and the sharp curve of the path the remaining dark ships in that group were following as they swung out to one side and down relative to Geary’s formation. “We didn’t hit them hard enough.” He had always tried to avoid battles of attrition in which each side wore down the other, taking and inflicting losses at terrible rates. But he was beginning to believe that this battle would offer no alternatives to that strategy that weren’t even worse.

“Delta One,” Geary sent, “maintain your position relative to this formation until we clear the enemy support facility region.”

The government facility, a vast structure orbiting in solitary splendor, gleamed as Geary’s fleet swept past it. Hazard lights were visible on the outside of the structure, and on Geary’s display the exterior view of the facility was overlain with sensor readings of heat leakage and power use that showed which portions of the facility were in use. The intended home for an Alliance government in exile radiated a sense of great strength as well as great size, which struck Geary as ironic given its intended function. The only way this facility would ever have been occupied by the Alliance government was if Unity had fallen and most if not all of the Alliance had been occupied by the Syndics. Its use for its intended functions would have marked last-ditch desperation and defeat, not strength.

“We might have had to use this,” Desjani said. “If you hadn’t shown up.”

“And now it’s my job to neutralize it,” Geary said. “Are the living stars laughing?”

Mistral
was partly out of sight around the curve of the facility as she backed in to the dock, her main propulsion flaring at full power as the assault transport slowed rapidly over the last few thousand meters before exactly matching the orbital vector of the facility. Geary saw
Mistral
’s propulsion stutter once as Commander Young fine-tuned the braking slightly, maneuvering thrusters also adjusting the transport’s angle of approach. Seconds later, the transport glided into the dock,
comm relays dropped in
Mistral
’s wake still providing a solid link to the assault ship for the rest of the fleet even though she was now completely within the hangar.

As far as Geary could see, no other dark ships were maneuvering to attack
Mistral
. Now that she was inside the dock, the dark ships appeared to have completely lost interest in her. “Good work, Commander,” Geary sent. “The dark ships are not continuing to target
Mistral
. But don’t forget that the dark ships may well be trying to work around whatever prevents them firing on that facility and on you. We don’t know how much time you have.”

New virtual windows had popped up next to Geary’s seat, showing the views from the armor of Marines who were already charging off
Mistral
and storming the facility. If he wanted to, Geary could call up the view from the armor of any Marine in the assault force, but at the moment he had a job to do dealing with the dark ships. He couldn’t waste his attention riding the shoulder of a Marine lieutenant or sergeant or private.

Still, the windows were there, visible to a glance to the side, so Geary could remain aware of what was happening with the Marines without focusing his attention on them. He saw assault teams hacking the controls on hatches to allow access to inside the facility before he was called back to the larger picture by Desjani.

“We just got the ping back from the hypernet gate,” Desjani said. “You were right. The hypernet gate is reporting that there are no other gates accessible from it. It’s blocked.”

“I wish I’d been wrong on that one.” Geary touched a comm control. “Victoria, the gate
is
blocked. We need to know how to unblock it.”

“I was already assuming the worst, Admiral,” she replied. Rione had not yet left
Mistral
but was poised to follow the Marines inside the facility. “It saves time in situations like this. If that information is on this facility, I will find it.”

“Five minutes to bombardment launch,” Lieutenant Yuon said.
“Uh, combat systems are still requesting confirmation of plan and authorization to launch, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Geary said. He called up that data again, saw that nothing had changed to alter his intentions, confirmed the bombardment plan, then authorized the launch to take place automatically as his warships reached the right points along their paths. “Do you ever think it ought to be harder to cause this much destruction, Tanya?”

Desjani gave him a disbelieving look. “No. It’s too hard as it is. If something needs to be destroyed, let me destroy the blasted thing.”

“Not everyone has your sense of restraint, Tanya.”

“Excuse me, Admiral?”

He didn’t answer as Geary’s fleet swept through the orbital region holding the docks and warehouses. The docks were huge, rectangular structures, with almost-as-large superstructures on their backs that contained repair and fabrication facilities, offices, living spaces for workers, life support, and a variety of other necessities for a typical shipyard. On the fleet’s sensors, all of those areas intended for human use looked dark and cold, kept just warm enough for equipment to function properly, or with all life support shut off, as frigid as empty space. The docks were lifeless by any biological definition, but power usage within provided clear signs of the mechanical “life” that ruled within them. “Like haunted houses,” someone whispered.

The warehouses resembled enormous beehives, rounded structures with external access and loading docks located all around them on different levels. The main cargo off-loading docks were at the top and bottom of the warehouses to allow new material to be distributed throughout the structure using very large cargo elevators in the core.

Each of the docks and warehouses also boasted a single propulsion unit whose thrust could produce a significant change in their orbits given enough time. It was an expensive addition to such facilities, but if the Alliance fleet had been able to launch a bombardment from light-hours away, the structures would have had ample time to make the
relatively small alterations in their orbits that would cause the bombardment projectiles to completely miss their targets. However, with Geary’s warships planning on launching so close to their targets and the rocks moving so fast, in this case the propulsion units would be totally useless.

The size and numbers of the structures rivaled that of a major shipbuilding region of space in a wealthy star system. If the Alliance had been forced to retreat here, these structures would have allowed the Alliance to continue to launch raids on the Syndic conquerors.

Geary wondered what point that effort would have had. Victory would have been impossible unless the Syndicate Worlds had been so badly stressed by winning that it fell apart and left an opening for the Alliance government to reoccupy the ruins of Alliance star systems. But by the time Geary had been reawoken after a century of war, there no longer appeared to be any point to most things about the war. Neither side believed they had any chance of winning, but the Syndicate Worlds would not stop attacking, and the Alliance would not surrender, and nothing else mattered, no other courses of action were considered possible.

He was about to destroy a symbol of that stubborn insanity.

A hail of bombardment projectiles launched from Geary’s warships, hurtling toward the vast structures designed to support ships like them but now dedicated to the dark ships.

The solid metal projectiles nicknamed rocks by fleet personnel had no warheads, no explosives, but were traveling at more than thirty thousand kilometers per second. Each carried an immense amount of kinetic energy, and when they struck anything, that energy was released.

Under the impacts of dozens of hits on every target, docks shredded, flying apart into clouds of large and small pieces. Warehouses exploded, those containing weapons or fuel cells vanishing in rapid successions of gigantic explosions as their contents self-detonated, their contents and their structures becoming a mass of small particles
flung outward. In the space of seconds, structures built at immense cost in time, money, and labor were turned into a huge field of debris.

“No matter what happens to us here, it was worth it to blow away all that,” Desjani said, smiling at her display. “Someday, thousands of years in the future, that ring of debris will have spread to form a thin ring within this binary star system. That’s something to imagine, isn’t it?”

“An asteroid belt composed of the ruin of war,” Geary mused. “We’ll name it Tanya’s Ring.”

“A debris field big enough to form a belt in a star system, named after me? Now I can die happy.”

He glanced at her and confirmed the impression he had from Tanya’s tone of voice.

She wasn’t joking.

And with all five dark ship formations coming back at the Alliance ships again, and the hypernet gate still blocked, there seemed to be all too great a chance that it might happen before this day was
out.

“ADMIRAL,”
Lieutenant Castries reported in amazement, “the fleet has detected a jump point for Hardinga.”

Geary checked his display. The jump point had popped into existence over five light-hours away, leading to a moderately-well-populated star system near this binary. Near as interstellar distances went, anyway. “How long—”

“It’s unstable,” Castries continued, then realized she had interrupted Geary. “I’m sorry, Admiral. Our sensors assess that the jump point is unstable. I’ve never seen that before.”

“You’ve never been in a close binary star system before,” Desjani said. “Look at that. Our sensors are estimating the jump point has an eighty percent chance of collapsing within seven hours of coming into existence.”

“And it came into existence five hours ago,” Geary said. “How can our systems estimate that sort of thing? The life span of an unstable jump point?”

“Somebody must have studied unstable jump points,” Desjani said.
“Maybe remote observations from surrounding star systems that gave them some astronomical data to work with. Or maybe someone just ran the math for interactions of gravity fields for two stars, and that ended up in our ship systems as part of the baseline data for jump point analysis.”

“We couldn’t go anywhere anyway until we recovered
Mistral
,” Geary said, “even if there was any chance of that jump point still being there by the time we got there.”

With the dark ships still about an hour from any possible intercepts, Geary checked the status of the Marines. The sooner they got their job done, the sooner he could focus exclusively on battling the dark ships.

The stacked tiles of virtual windows showing views from the Marine armor revealed what were now slightly time-delayed images, over a minute old due to the distance between the fleet and the government facility. The Marines were inside, some progressing without resistance down corridors and into rooms that mostly had a feeling of having never seen human presence since being constructed.

But other Marines were traveling into areas of the facility that had actually been used. There were signs of wear on walls and floors, occasional bits of trash that had so far evaded the small housekeeping robots, and here and there rooms bearing signs of hasty departure. Scattered clothing littered floors and furniture, abandoned snacks and meals rested on desks and tables, and unmade beds bore in the shape of the sheets traces of the people who had once used them.

“What happened to them?” Geary heard a Marine ask her platoon leader.

“Best guess is they ran for it, and their ship got nailed,” the officer replied. “Everybody look for signs any of this stuff has been disturbed since it was abandoned in place. We need to know if there is anyone left here.”

The lieutenant’s question was rudely answered seconds later as
nearby Marines finally encountered opposition. Geary switched his view to one of those Marine officers, seeing a wide corridor ahead that was sealed by blast doors at the far end. “It’s automated defenses or someone directing fire,” a captain was reporting to his superior. “We can’t tell which yet.”

“Hold your positions. We’ve got units working around the flanks of this passage, and two platoons from Second Company on the next level down.”

Geary involuntarily jerked as bursts of fire came from the vicinity of the blast doors to lash the area where these Marines were hunkered down. “Can we return fire?”

“Not unless you see a target. Hold position.”

Switching his attention back to the big picture, Geary saw that Delta One’s battle cruisers were maintaining their position near the main Alliance formation, which was proceeding along a shallow curve that would eventually form an orbital path around Star Alpha if they stayed on it. The Dancers were nearly a light-minute away and above the Alliance warships, gathered into a group but not engaging in any of the playful maneuvering that they were famous for.

The five dark ship formations were all lined up to hit Geary’s formation, aiming for near-simultaneous intercepts along the path ahead. The earliest of those intercepts was forty-two minutes away.

“Ideas?” he asked Desjani.

“We need to know if there’s anything on the facility that will unblock that gate,” she replied. “If there is, we need to stall and wear out the dark ships like last time, which will be a lot harder this time. If there isn’t, we need to figure out how to close with them and kill more of them than they kill of us.”

“You’re recommending I avoid action until we know which tactics we need to follow?”

“Yes, sir,” Desjani said, nodding, her eyes on her display. “We’ve got at least fifteen minutes before we should maneuver to mess with their
plans. Why don’t you see how the Marines and that woman are doing while I watch the overall situation?”

“Good idea.” He refocused on the Marine action.

Spotting some Marines proceeding cautiously up a set of emergency access stairs, Geary linked his view to the armor of their platoon leader. An enlisted Marine was kneeling at an access hatch, working on the lock, then gave his lieutenant a thumbs-up.

“We’re ready to go,” the lieutenant reported, her breathing deep and regular as she prepared for action.

“Hit ’em,” the order came back. “Through the hatch and left. You’ll take them in the rear.”

“Got it. Through hatch, left. Are we weapons free?”

“If they fire, you are cleared to engage. The brass wants live prisoners, though. See if they’ll surrender when they realize they’ve been flanked.”

“Roger.” The lieutenant repeated the orders to her platoon, then as the nearest Marine yanked open the hatch, the entire force charged through, the Marines in their heavy combat armor having to duck and twist to get through an opening intended for typical human sizes.

The Marines emerged into what Geary recognized as another section of that broad corridor, this part on the other side of the defended blast doors. Several men and women wearing reinforced survival suits were crouched near the doors. They did not realize at first that there were Marines behind them, but when one turned and cried a warning the rest jerked around rapidly to face this new attack

“Drop your weapons!” The voice of the Marine lieutenant, amplified by her battle armor, boomed through the corridor.

One of the defenders brought up a weapon to aiming position, and died a second later as several Marines put shots through him.

The rest stood frozen before dropping their weapons hastily.

“We got six prisoners and one body,” the lieutenant reported.

The six survivors, whose reinforced survival suits bore a private
security contractor symbol, sounded terrified, not defiant like the agents Geary still had detained aboard
Dauntless
. “We didn’t sign up for this,” one announced. “Don’t want to fight no Marines. We’re on the same side.”

“Uh-huh,” the lieutenant replied. “Who’s in charge? This guy?” She indicated the dead defender.

“No, no, it’s the suits! They only talk to us to give orders. They’re holed up in the command center.”

“Pack ’em up,” the lieutenant told her platoon. “And get those blast doors open.”

“Wait!” another one of the private security guards cried. “We can help you guys! I heard what they’re doing. They’re getting ready to fry all the files in the system! Sanitize the records, they call it. If they know you’ve made it past us, they’ll set off magnetic pulse bombs all over the station!”

“Captain?” the lieutenant called.

“I heard. We’ve got hack and cracks breaking into the systems at remote locations and trying to sever the links from the command center. Hold your position and see what else those guys can tell you.”

The captured contractors had no qualms about spilling their guts since they had been told to stay behind when most of the other occupants of the facility had tried to flee. “No room, they told us. They said they’d send somebody back for us. Then we saw them get blown to pieces. Ever since then, we’ve been hiding in here, hoping those damned ships wouldn’t notice us.”

Geary pulled his attention away from the Marines again, hoping they would successfully prevent the “suits” from destroying all of the records on the facility. “Any changes?” he asked Desjani.

“They’re a bit closer, that’s all,” she said. “How are the grunts doing?”

“They’re working it.” Geary rubbed his lower face with one hand as he considered the situation. “I’m thinking we should—”

“Admiral,” the comm watch-stander announced loudly, “we have a message coming in from one of the dark battle cruisers!” He cringed before Desjani could even direct a withering glare at him, then spoke at a normal volume. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

“I’m the only one who yells on this bridge,” she informed him, “and no one likes it when I do.”

“Yes, Captain. Admiral, what should I do with the message?”

Geary had controlled his initial reaction, managing to just nod in response. “Send it to me.”

The image of Admiral Bloch appeared before him. He had last seen Bloch at the Syndicate Worlds home star system, Prime, when the defeated Bloch was taking a shuttle to the Syndicate flagship to plea for a deal to save the rest of the apparently doomed Alliance fleet. He had thought that Bloch had died that day, along with the other senior fleet officers, murdered by Syndic special forces.

But the Syndics had not wanted to kill a captive whose knowledge might prove valuable. They had kept him, and when the war was over and Bloch’s living presence offered a chance to disrupt the still-hated Alliance, the Syndics sent him home.

Then, having nearly lost the war for the Alliance, and having made little secret of his belief that a military dictatorship overseen by him would cure the ills of the Alliance, Bloch was received by some as a champion. And as someone who might be a counter to the immense popularity of Black Jack Geary. Faced with Black Jack, a hero whose achievements and fame were seen as threats to the government, parts of the government reacted by embracing Black Jack’s antithesis.

It hadn’t gone well for the government, and as Geary looked at Bloch’s image, he saw that it hadn’t gone well for Admiral Bloch, either. From appearances, Senator Unruh’s suspicions that Bloch had already regretted getting what he wanted were extremely accurate.

Bloch was in a compartment that looked like a fairly luxurious stateroom fitted out with a ship’s bridge command fixtures. The lavish
compartment was messy, though, with empty ration containers strewn about.

Admiral Bloch himself looked as bad as he had when he left
Dauntless
on that day at Prime when he was supposed to arrange a surrender of what was left of the Alliance fleet. Geary remembered how dead Bloch’s eyes had seemed then as his dreams of power and glory crumbled. But now his appearance was at least as bad. Admiral Bloch’s eyes held the terror of a small mammal held in a trap.

“Black Jack,” Bloch said with forced familiarity. “Admiral Geary now! Congratulations on that and . . . and on your many . . . many victories. I am in a . . . difficult situation. The ships under my . . . uh . . . that are supposed to be under my command . . . have . . . uh . . . malfunctioned.” His lips bent in a weak attempt at a smile. “Mutiny, you could call it.

“Most of these ships have no provision for crews,” Bloch said, gaining some composure as he described technical matters. “Except this one. The flagship. We have a small area with life support for me and my staff.” His eyes shifted, avoiding looking toward Geary. “We have . . . had . . . two shuttles in the dock on this battle cruiser. For the use of me and my staff. Also fully automated. No pilots.”

Admiral Bloch swallowed uncomfortably. “My staff . . . took one. To try to get to the government facility. They . . . did not make it. Once the shuttle got clear of this ship, it apparently registered as a target for the surrounding ships of the Defender Fleet.”

“That bastard,” Desjani said in a low voice. “He told them to go first so he could see whether or not the dark ships would target a shuttle from his flagship.”

“After which he would take the second one,” Geary agreed.

“You need to know something, Black Jack,” Bloch continued, his attitude now defiant as if he realized what his audience’s reaction would be to his earlier admission. “You’ve been too clever. I can still see what is happening outside of my flagship. Outside of my stateroom.
I saw you destroy the docks and warehouses on which my fleet is dependent. Yes, you knocked out the support system for the Defender ships. But even though I cannot control them, I can monitor their decision processes. Do you know what you have done, Admiral? Destroying their support facilities here at Unity Alternate has activated the Armageddon Option in their programming.”

“Armageddon Option does not sound good,” Desjani murmured.

“Once they have destroyed your fleet,” Bloch said, “the Defender warships will proceed to Unity, which their programming now assumes is enemy-occupied, and they will destroy everything at Unity. Then they will move on to other important star systems in the Alliance, destroying as much as they can while their fuel cells and expendable weaponry hold out.”

“Ancestors preserve us,” Geary whispered.

“It gets worse,” Bloch added. It was obvious that he wasn’t enjoying reciting this information. “The largest of the Defender ships, the battle cruisers and the battleships, are equipped with the codes necessary to override the safe-collapse systems that have been installed on the hypernet gates. When they are unable to continue their attacks, those ships will trigger the collapse of the gates in whichever star systems they occupy and devastate those star systems.
I
did not want that option to exist.
I
told everyone that it should not be placed on an automated weapons platform. But some people demanded it be installed. I don’t think many others even know it is there. But I found out it had been installed, and now I have told you.”

“And what the hell are you supposed to do about it?” Desjani asked Geary, appalled by what Bloch had revealed.

“You can’t let them get out of this star system,” Bloch pleaded. “They will tear the guts out of the Alliance. I’m not a perfect man, Admiral. But this was not supposed to happen. I never would have agreed to accept this assignment if I knew how many flaws existed in the Defender concept. I can help you beat the Defender ships. I know
more than you about their programming. About how to outsmart them. We can work together, and win this battle, and save the Alliance together.”