The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Leviathan (31 page)

“That’s what I thought,” Geary said. “In any event, it is impossible to get him off the dark battle cruiser that is his flagship. The best that Bloch can hope for is that we knock out but not destroy that dark ship, leaving him a chance to get off it. But we can’t limit our attacks, or risk the lives of our people, to try to save him.”

“I agree. Michael would not want such a deal made in his name.” She looked over at Tanya. “He would be happy to know that the family included a worthy new sister when we fought our last fight.”

“Thank you,” Tanya said.

Jane Geary saluted them both, then her image vanished as well.

Geary took a moment to compose himself, then called General Charban. “You’ll need to tell the Dancers what we’re going to do.” He explained the fleet’s plans, then gestured in the direction of the
Dancers, who were once again tagging along close to the Alliance warships. “The Dancers are under no obligation to stay here and fight to the death with us, though we will be immensely grateful for their assistance. Let me know what they are planning on doing.”

“Yes, Admiral. What are our chances, do you think?”

“I think our fleet will achieve its objectives, General. I don’t expect to survive that. I don’t think many of us will. Maybe none.”

“That’s what I thought.” Charban shrugged. “At least I can stop worrying about why I survived earlier battles when others did not. This will simplify my life though, of course, I will no longer be alive to benefit from that. We’ll see how the Dancers feel about this kind of fight.”

That done, Geary looked over at Tanya. “Regrets?”

“I’m doing what I love, Admiral.” She looked at him, then smiled. “And in good company.”

“Me, too.”

—

“I
need more time, Admiral,” Rione’s image insisted with a fierce intensity unlike her usual cool outward demeanor. “I think I can find what we need. But I require more time than you are allowing. I must have that time.”

They were still a couple of light-minutes from the government facility. The four-minute delays between each statement and the reply being received made the conversation awkward but not intolerable. “I can’t give you more time,” Geary said. “If you haven’t found anything yet, odds are there is nothing to find. Maybe Admiral Bloch has the codes and hasn’t coughed them up. You can try to convince him to do that. The dark ship battle cruiser he is on has survived so far, and despite his talk about risking a shuttle journey to join our fleet, Bloch didn’t make any moves to do that during any of our engagements so far.

“It would be good to have access to that gate so we could get
Mistral
out of here fast, but it’s not critical that we use the hypernet gate. It is critical that
Mistral
take advantage of the opportunity to get back within the protection of our warships while the dark ships are preoccupied with destroying
Invincible
. The bottom line is that
Mistral
needs to pull out when I ordered so that we have a chance to get her out of this star system. And you and your husband need to be on
Mistral
.”

Rione did not reply. He imagined she was angry, but he had no emotional stress left unused to devote to worrying about that.

—

ABOUT
an hour later, the Alliance formations swung by the government facility. The dark ships had surely reached
Invincible
by now, but the light from their attack had not yet traveled all the way from that location to where Geary’s fleet could see it. The Alliance sensors could only see images nearly an hour old of the dark ships closing in on the alien superbattleship. Odds were that the dark ships had actually finished their attacks on
Invincible
and were already on their way back to deal with Geary’s forces again.

Mistral
shot out of the dock, accelerating as rapidly as she could to rejoin the other warships. “Mission completed as ordered,” Commander Young’s image told Geary.

Next to her, Colonel Rico nodded. He looked like someone who had been wearing battle armor for hours and was, in fact, still in it, just his face shield opened. “We have multiple copies of everything in every record file in every storage source aboard that facility, Admiral. There were also papers.”

“Papers?” Geary asked. “What kind of papers?”

“Papers with records on them, and orders, and information,” Rico clarified.

“Really? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that.”

“My hack and cracks think the paper records were used instead of digital files to limit any chance of the information being copied or
leaked,” Rico explained. “We discovered something else about their security precautions when we looked outside the facility using the sensors on it. They showed us a star system with only one star, Alpha. Beta was completely screened out, gravitational effects and everything. I bet it was the same way on any ships bringing in people and taking them back. Probably only a few people out of everyone sent here ever knew it was a binary.”

“Clever,” Geary said.

“Yes, sir,” Commander Young agreed. “Some people have gotten entirely too comfortable with the idea of making everyone else see only what is wanted.”

“We brought the private security guards out,” Rico added, “including the body of the one we had to shoot. The guards are prisoners, but they’re not giving us any trouble. They figure we saved them. We’ve also locked up the people who were prisoners aboard the facility. We don’t know why they had been locked up, so we’re not taking chances.”

“That can be sorted out later. What about the suits?” Geary asked.

“Locked in the highest-security cells on
Mistral
,” Commander Young answered. “The Marines, my masters-at-arms, and our medical personnel gave all of the suits a good going-over before we locked them up to ensure no one had suicide capability on them or in them. I don’t know if all of them are a threat, either. Some of the suits are acting like people who were asking themselves questions even before we showed up.”

“What about codes for the hypernet gate?” Geary said. He already knew what the answer must be because no one had led with that information, but still asked in a sort of forlorn hope.

“No, sir. We didn’t find them. Former Senator Rione thought she had a lead, but there wasn’t any more time.”

“Where is Rione?”

Commander Young checked a display on her ship. “In her stateroom, with her husband. He’s in really bad shape, Admiral. I think
that hit her real hard. She’s got a comm block on the stateroom, but I can override it if you need to talk to her.”

“No,” Geary said. “If she had found anything, she would have already told me.”

He had considered having
Mistral
join Gamma One, positioned near
Dauntless
, but realized that putting two high-value targets right next to each other would be tempting fate, or at least tempting the dark ships. Instead, Geary ordered
Mistral
to join with Gamma Three, taking up position near
Dreadnaught
.

“Admiral, we have our answer from the Dancers,” Charban said. “It’s an odd little song to human ears, but it comes down to a statement that they were sent to stop the dark ships, and they will stay and fight to complete that mission.”

“Thank them for me,” Geary said. “Can we tell the Dancers that we are honored to fight alongside them?”

“Yes,” Charban replied, his expression thoughtful. “It should take the form of saying that we and they belong together in the pattern, I think. Something like that. I’ll put something suitable together.”

“And what have our honored fighting companions said about their undisclosed-until-now ability to activate Kick and Alliance ship systems from very long distances?”

Charban smiled. “I think they may have been embarrassed to be called on that. The answer they gave is that the methods they use are easily overridden by supervisors, whether human or Kick. On the targeted system, if there is someone present to override what looks like a glitch, it is too subtle to be identified as intrusion. But it is also far too weak to work on any system being monitored for glitches. I naturally asked why their methods could not work on the dark ships, and the Dancers replied that the AIs on the dark ships act as supervisors or monitors. The term they used actually translated as ‘over-minds.’ It is, therefore, a potentially valuable capability, but only when dealing with something lacking an operator, human or Kick or artificial.”

Fifteen minutes after the fleet passed the orbiting facility, the light finally reached them from the dark ship attack on
Invincible
. Despite the millions of kilometers between where the Alliance ships were and the site of the attack, the optical sensors aboard the fleet’s ships could get crystal-clear images through the emptiness of space.

Geary did not want to watch, but he felt a responsibility to do so. He flinched as the dark ships opened fire, dark battle cruisers blowing apart the Alliance fleet tugs propelling the alien warship.

Astoundingly,
Invincible
got off a few shots at the dark ships from her remaining weapons as the enemy came in close. Geary heard cheers aboard
Dauntless
and knew her crew was celebrating the heroic resistance of
Invincible
. It was just the automated weapons systems on the alien superbattleship, but it still felt like a brave ship going down fighting.

But
Invincible
’s remaining weapons were quickly silenced as the dark battleships came close enough to pour streams of hell-lance fire into the superbattleship.

“They’re smart enough this time to conserve their expendable weapons,” Desjani commented. “No missiles, no grapeshot, not even bombardment projectiles, just hell lances.”

“Yeah. The dark ships learned that lesson as well. Too bad.”

It felt unreal to watch so many hell-lance hits pummeling
Invincible
, while the superbattleship drifted onward, to all appearances living up to the name that Admiral Lagemann had given her.

But even the Kick superbattleship could not take that kind of punishment forever. Geary saw the dark ships opening their distance to
Invincible
and guessed what was coming. “One or more of the Kick power cores are going unstable due to damage.”

“They must have been built tough to have stood up to that barrage as long as they did,” she observed.

He glanced at her, saw the unusual intensity with which Desjani was watching events, and realized that she was trying to distract herself. “Are you all right?”

“No. I lost more friends today. I’ll get over it. Or I’ll see the docs for some happy pills. Or we’ll all die soon. Whichever way, it won’t be a problem.”

An explosion ripped a huge hole in
Invincible
, followed by another that tore another gaping wound in the alien warship. But the superbattleship lurched onward.

The dark battleships closed in again, firing so intensely that they had to pause to prevent their hell-lance batteries from overheating.

Sections began breaking off
Invincible
, then, as the dark battleships swiftly withdrew once more, three additional massive explosions tore the superbattleship apart.

Geary sighed, thinking of the loss those explosions represented. “There are a lot of large pieces. Maybe there will be something left that we can use or learn from.”

“Maybe,” Desjani said.

Over an hour ago, the dark ships had turned and begun accelerating after the Alliance warships again. “Here we go,” Desjani said.

—

WORD
had gotten around that the fleet was unlikely to survive the battle in this star system, as well as why the fleet had to stay and fight even if the opportunity to flee miraculously presented itself.

The officers, sailors, and Marines took the news as the senior captains had. They had long ago resigned themselves to this.

Lines formed outside the worship compartments as men and women took advantage of the time available to make their peace or offer prayers or beg for miracles.

Geary, brooding over their lack of options and half-asleep from fatigue, started back to awareness as Tanya Desjani returned to her seat on the bridge. “Were you saying hello to our ancestors?”

“I’ll probably be able to do that in person soon enough,” she replied. “No. I had some urgent requests to perform marriage services by
people who figured they had better get it done fast if they ever wanted it done. I just rushed through six of them, without getting all the proper authorizations and approvals.”

“You could get in trouble for that when fleet headquarters finds out,” Geary commented sarcastically.

“I’ll risk it. I just made sure to ask each couple whether, should we somehow live another day after this, they would regret making this decision. They all said they wouldn’t. We’ll probably never know.” Desjani gave him a sidelong look. “One of the couples were Charban’s lieutenants.”

Geary jerked back to full attention yet again. “Lieutenant Iger and Lieutenant Jamenson?”

“Yeah. Someday there might have been the patter of the feet of little green-haired future intelligence officers.” Tanya gave him another look. “The green-hair thing is dominant, you know. Lieutenant Jamenson’s ancestors made sure of that, and I made sure that Lieutenant Iger was aware of it. It didn’t seem to faze him, though.”

“Thank you for not being from Eire,” Geary said, “not that it looks like you and I are likely to be doing any reproducing.”

This time her look held warning. “Hey, Admiral, we stay professional on this bridge until the end. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” He sat up. They had gone a light-hour outward, deliberately angling away from the hypernet gate to avoid tempting the dark ships to drop the block on it and leave this star system to implement the Armageddon Option before finishing off Geary’s fleet. The government facility was six hours’ travel time behind them. “The dark ships are two light-hours from us, in a stern chase. I should get some rest while I can.”

“Yes, sir, you should.” She smiled at him. “Sweet dreams.”

He had worried that he would be too tightly wound with fears of the continuation of the battle to be able to sleep and too overwhelmed by the losses the fleet had already suffered. But he must have been even
more exhausted than he thought. Geary fell into a deep sleep within moments.