The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible (13 page)

“Use one of the big conference rooms,” Desjani ordered. “Assume a dozen users at one time. How long until it’s up?”

“Half an hour, Captain.”

“Do it, and make sure if you need more time to do it right you ask for it. I don’t want that software having any access to the rest of the systems.”

The lieutenant commander nodded. “Yes, Captain. I don’t want something like that loose, either. If we can figure out how it adapted to our hardware, we’ll get some really cool ideas from it, though.”

Desjani twisted her mouth as she watched her security officer. “Their software does things our software can’t?”

“Yes, Captain.” The lieutenant commander grinned with almost childlike enthusiasm. “We don’t know how yet, but it was amazing to watch. The software is really . . . cool.”

“Thank you. Get on that network,” Desjani said. After the image of the systems security officer vanished, she looked at Geary. “Some software that makes my code monkeys drool with delight, and those things just gave it to us.”

“Maybe they don’t think it’s anything special,” Geary suggested.

“Maybe not, but if that’s so, I’d hate to see their special software.” Desjani turned to Charban. “General, you’ll have access to that program as soon as I get that isolated network safely set up.”

Geary faced Charban and Rione. “They must intend for us to use that program to develop a means of communication. Here’s what I most need to be able to communicate to them. I need them to know we don’t want to fight them. Can we transit their territory in peace? I need to know their attitude toward the bear-cows. Are they enemies? Neutral? Or allies? Will they stand by if we engage the bear-cow armada, or will they take an active role?”

Charban nodded, his eyes intent. “Those will be our priorities. But aside from the time we must spend learning how to ask those things, there is the time involved in exchanging messages. We are still more than fifty light-minutes from the spider-wolf ships.”

“I know we need time.” Geary tapped another control. “All units, accelerate to point one five light speed at time five zero.” That would buy some more hours before the bear-cows caught up, more hours to find out what the spider-wolves intended.

“How the hell are we going to take those things down?” Desjani wondered, looking at her display, where the bear-cow superbattleships were thundering in the wake of the human fleet.

“HAS
anyone here not seen the images sent to us by the beings in the ships ahead of us?” Geary asked, looking around the conference table. Since the message had been broadcast to the fleet, he expected that everyone had seen them.

The expressions on his ship captains answered the question without words.

“We still don’t know what the intent of the spider-wolves is,” Geary said. “Our experts and our emissaries are working to establish meaningful communications, but, at best, such communications will be primitive and very limited for some time.”

“Are they going to aid the Kicks?” Captain Badaya demanded. “That’s what we need to know.”

“The Kicks?” Geary looked around, seeing some of the officers nodding in recognition of the term and others looking as puzzled as he felt.

“It’s a term the sailors came up with,” Captain Duellos explained. “They started calling the bear-cows Killer Cows or Crazy Cows, which got condensed to KCs and CCs, which are both pronounced as Kicks.”

“Works for me,” Desjani muttered.

Geary couldn’t really object to either name when it came to the bear-cows, and Kicks wasn’t either obscene or a word that sounded like it might be obscene, so the term would work for him as well. But the byplay had distracted him. Geary took a second to recall Badaya’s question, then activated a copy of the latest message received from the spider-wolves so that it played before everyone present, virtually or in person. The animation of spider-wolf ships attacking bear-cow ships could not be mistaken. “It looks like they are enemies. Watch the next scene.”

Now the animation shifted, incorporating pasted-in images of human warships in this fleet. The animated human warships and the spider-wolf ships moved together, jointly firing on bear-cow combatants, which exploded in some nicely done computer graphics.

“They want to ally with us?” Captain Duellos said. “The ugliest creatures in the universe, and they want to be friends.”

Captain Bradamont, who rarely spoke in these meetings, did so now. “As the admiral mentioned earlier, they’re probably thinking the same thing about us.”

Laughter erupted, born as much from release of tension as from the humor of the statement.

“If they think we’re ugly,” Captain Badaya added, “wait until they see some of the Marines!”

More laughter, accompanied by looks at General Carabali, who waved away the comment. “It’s a well-known fact that when we hit planet-side, the Marines get all the available girls and boys while the fleet officers and sailors are left standing around alone.”

“Taking the local populace prisoner is not a measure of social success by most definitions,” Duellos observed.

Geary quieted the next burst of laughter. The relief that had given rise to the light mood could easily shift quickly to renewed realization that they faced a serious challenge here. “The important thing is, we have allies. Unfortunately, there’s no way to coordinate our attacks. We’ll have to operate independently, attacking the bear-cows while also avoiding interfering with the spider-wolves.”

“And keeping an eye on the spider-wolves?” Tulev asked. “We have only their word that they are enemies of the bear-cows.”

“We’ll keep a close eye on our new allies and best friends forever,” Desjani confirmed.

Geary hesitated as he saw how everyone accepted what Desjani said as a definitive answer, just as if he had given it. Were they accepting that she had already consulted with him on that subject, or did they assume that she could call the shots not only on the bridge of
Dauntless
but also in her professional relationship with him? “Yes,” he finally said, hoping that didn’t sound like a weak agreement. “We’ll take nothing for granted.”

He brought up the display showing this star system. Ahead loomed the spider-wolf formation, smoothly perfect ships in gorgeous intertwining loops, now only ten light-minutes away. “We’re still in the middle, but not for long.” Behind, the bear-cow armada had stabilized into an oblong that bore a disquieting resemblance to the head of a sledgehammer, especially since the face of the formation closest to the human fleet included the superbattleships. Since Geary had held the velocity of the human fleet to point one five light speed, the bear-cows had been steadily getting closer and now were less than two light-minutes behind the human fleet.

On the display, the human formation of interlinked triangles finally broke, individual ships streaming off on different vectors that gradually coalesced into three subformations of roughly equal size, each heading in a different direction. “We’ve been giving the bear-cows a single target to charge at. Now we’re going to make them choose, and whichever one they choose, the other two subformations will be able to hit them while the targeted subformation evades.”

“Or if those spider-wolves are indeed the enemies of the bear-cows,” Duellos said, eyeing the display, “then when we pull away in different directions, the bear-cows may simply keep charging straight ahead at the spider-wolves. I’m not certain I would be pleased about that if I were the spider-wolves.”

Geary paused again. He hadn’t considered that, thinking that the bear-cows would continue their single-minded pursuit of the humans. But with the spider-wolves right in front of them, the bear-cows might shift targets.

He looked down and over at Desjani, who had helped develop the plan and was unsuccessfully trying to look like she was surprised by Duellos’s suggestion.
Tanya, you obviously figured out that might happen and didn’t tell me. We’re going to have words about that.

Badaya was frowning mightily as he thought. “If that happens, if the Kicks go straight for the spiders, it will be an excellent opportunity for us to observe whether or not these two sets of aliens are indeed enemies and how the spider creatures engage their foes in space combat. That’s a clever approach, Admiral.”

“Thank you,” Geary said, not looking at Desjani. “We’ll have to see what happens, but we’ll be able to react appropriately no matter what the bear-cows do and remain clear of the spider-wolf formation just in case they’re not as friendly as they say.”

Commander Neeson hunched forward. “My systems security officer briefed me on the spider-wolf program we received. Our software specialists are geeking out over it.”

“I understand it has capabilities beyond anything human software can do,” Geary said.

“Is the rest of the spider-wolf technology superior to ours? My engineers are also enraptured by what they’ve seen of the spider-wolf ships.”

Geary gave the only answer he could. “We’ll find out. Right now, with the spider-wolf flotilla not changing its vector, we can’t tell what their maneuvering capabilities are like. Their shield strength seems to match ours, but we don’t know if they’re at full strength or dialed back since their ships are not in action at this time.”

Captain Smythe spoke up. “My specialists analyzed what could be seen of the spider-wolf equipment in the videos they have sent us. About the only conclusion they were willing to reach was that the bridge appears to be truly three-dimensional in its layout.”

“Three-dimensional?” Tulev questioned.

“There doesn’t seem to be a deck,” Smythe explained, “a single surface that everything is arranged around. Instead, the arrangement of equipment seems to reflect no up-and-down bias. It’s just wherever it best fits.”

“They couldn’t have evolved in zero g,” someone protested.

“No, but however they evolved, they didn’t think in terms of ‘this has to be down and this has to be up.’”

“Have you passed that analysis on to the civilian experts?” Geary asked Smythe.

“Um . . .”

“Please do so as soon as this meeting is over.” He took a moment to be certain he hadn’t forgotten anything. “We know from our encounter at Pandora that the bear-cow superbattleships are extremely tough. Instead of focusing on them, our combat systems will be told to prioritize concentrating fire against the smaller warships accompanying the superbattleships. We’ll peel away those escorts, destroy all of them if necessary, and once the superbattleships are stripped of support, we’ll go after them one by one.”

“What if they run?” Captain Jane Geary asked.

“Then we wave ’bye and watch them go back to the jump exit.” He wasn’t sure how that answer would be taken, not in this fleet, which had long ago fallen back on a single-minded emphasis on attack to replace the tactical expertise wiped out by bloody losses in decade after decade. “If they run, we’ve won. Pursuing a bigger victory would surely cost more lives in this fleet, and I believe that we’ve lost enough humans already at the hands of the bear-cows.”

“We need to teach the Kicks a lesson,” Jane Geary insisted. “Now is the perfect time and place to do that.”

“We
need
to get home,” Captain Hiyen grumbled in response. “The ships of the Callas Republic are part of this fleet for the purpose of defending our homes. Turning back the Kicks with a bloody nose so they can’t follow us and have no idea where our homes are accomplishes that.”

“The Alliance fleet,” the commander of the heavy cruiser
Barding
began, “does not turn from battle and does not settle for less than complete victory.”

“Speak for yourself,” the captain of
Sapphire
replied. “That’s Black Jack, remember? If he says a victory satisfies honor, then I won’t question him. How can any of us?”

“Even Black Jack was just a man,” Jane Geary said, in the manner of someone who had made that kind of statement many times before. From what Geary had learned of her, his grandniece had spent her life resenting the Black Jack legend, which had constrained her and her brother Michael, forcing them into the fleet in the footsteps of their legendary great-uncle. “We do neither ourselves nor our fleet commander any credit by not raising appropriate questions—”

“This is not a debate.” Geary didn’t realize that he had said that, in tones that sliced across the conversation, until after every face turned toward him. “I am in command. This is the plan we will follow. Are there any other questions?”

There weren’t. As the officers vanished around him, leaving only Tanya Desjani still with him, Geary struggled to get his temper under control.

“I tried talking to her earlier,” Desjani said. “She was polite enough to me but no more than that. I made some joke about being part of the family now, and the temperature around her seemed to drop close to absolute zero.”

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“I think I’m beginning to.” Tanya stood up, her lips pressed tightly together. “She hated being a Geary, all her life she hated having to live in your shadow—”

“It was never
my
shadow!”

“All right. Black Jack’s shadow. The point is, she might have hated it, but it was her. She was a Geary. Everyone looked at her as being part of that, even if she didn’t like it. Now . . .” Tanya shrugged. “Now you’re back. You’re Black Jack himself, and don’t bother interrupting again to deny it, and you suck all of the oxygen out of her world just by being here. She’s just Jane now. And I’m your partner. Chosen to be with you. Where does that leave her?”