The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible (14 page)

Geary stood silently for a while. “Trying to be something.”

“Yeah. Because she thinks everything she was is gone. Something has to replace that. She changed after she went back to your home world, remember? What do you think people said there? In how many ways was she forced to measure herself against not a legend but against a real person? Now she’s going to prove she’s a Geary.”

He stared toward the bulkhead before him, seeing not the surface there but images of other captains who had sought glory. Captain Midea charging
Paladin
to destruction at Lakota. Captain Falco, leading
Triumph
,
Polaris
, and
Vanguard
to their deaths at Vidha. Captain Kila, cold-bloodedly arranging the destruction of
Lorica
at Padronis, while also trying to cause the loss of
Dauntless
with all hands.

Those officers had thought themselves heroic, and ships and crews had paid the price.

There was a way to prevent that.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Tanya said.

He focused on her. “What wouldn’t be a good idea?”

“Relieving her of command.”

“How did you—?”

She leaned in, one forefinger to his chest. “I know who you’re thinking of. You think she’s like Midea? I knew Midea a lot longer than you did. Jane Geary isn’t close to that. She’s been a bit reckless, she’s pushed for more action, but she hasn’t been stupid.”

“What about Falco?”

“
Falco?
Falco was epically stupid, and he thought nothing of spending ships and the lives of crews in the pursuit of his victories.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “You’re thinking of someone else.”

“You really are reading my mind, aren’t you?” At the moment, it didn’t seem a strange thing to believe at all.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Who’s the other one you’re thinking of?”

“Kila.”

Desjani glared at him silently for several seconds. “No one deserves to be compared to that murderous bitch, especially not your own grandniece. Keep this in mind, Admiral. I am death on incompetent officers. You know that. Jane Geary isn’t incompetent. She’s smart, but she needs a firm, guiding hand right now. You are her leader.
Lead
her.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s not funny, Admiral. Now let’s go teach some Kicks not to mess with the Alliance fleet.”

“That reminds me.” Desjani paused to look back at him as Geary frowned at her. “Why didn’t you bring up to me the possibility that the bear-cows would aim at the spider-wolves when we split our fleet?”

“Because you already knew! I knew that you wouldn’t want to admit knowing that could happen, but you know I know my job well enough to spot that, and I know you know enough about tactics to spot that as quickly as I did.”

It took him a moment to work his way through her statement. “Tanya, I hadn’t seen that before it was pointed out.”

“Seriously?” She stared at him, then shrugged. “Sorry, Admiral. You’re good at tactics. You know that. I assume you know things that look obvious and, in this case, were just being diplomatic to avoid saying, ‘Better those ugly suckers than us.’”

“You need to point out things like that to me rather than assume I already know them.”

“So you can say, ‘I know all that’?” Desjani demanded.

“I’ve said that
once
.”

“I respectfully beg to differ, sir.”

“I— Tanya, why the hell can you sometimes read my mind and other times not have a clue as to what I’m thinking?”

“I knew you were going to say that! No, I can’t ever read your mind. Can we go fight the battle now?”

“Yes.” Unlike this argument, at least he would have a chance of winning the battle.

HE
took his seat on the bridge of
Dauntless
, trying to put out of his mind everything except the coming battle.
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.
It sounded very easy. Actually doing it was going to be hard as hell.

But his attempt to concentrate was interrupted by a blip from his comm unit indicating that someone was trying to call. At least that was working right now.

No. It wasn’t working right. The incoming call was from Captain Vente, who had apparently finally realized that he had been completely sidelined since the loss of
Invincible
. But a call from Vente should have been automatically blocked.

Should he tell Tanya? She didn’t need distractions, either.

But if
Dauntless
’s comm system was acting up again, she needed to know, and he needed it fixed. “Captain Desjani, my comm settings aren’t being honored by the system.”

Her expression hardened. “Communications. The Admiral’s comms are not working properly. You have fifteen minutes to get everything functional, or this ship will have a new comm officer.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Geary made another effort to get his mind into battle readiness, only to have an alert flash red on his display. Before he could acknowledge it, the image of
Spartan
’s commanding officer appeared before him. “Admiral, half of my ship just went dark. Preliminary estimate is several power junctions failing nearly instantaneously.”

Damn. Damn. Damn.
“Do you still have maneuvering and propulsion?”

“Yes, sir, we have propulsion. We’re jury-rigging maneuvering circuits to get around the problem on the port side and should have adequate capability within five minutes.”

It could be worse. It could be far worse. “How about replacing the power junctions?” Geary asked.

“We only have enough onboard spares to get five of the seven junctions that failed replaced.”
Spartan
’s captain looked grim. “I am ensuring all records are sealed and damage sites maintained except for necessary repair work. If this was sabotage or negligence, we will identify how it was done.”

“Thank you,” Geary said. “Good thinking. There’s a strong chance, unfortunately, that it was just equipment failure. Were you putting extra stress on your ship’s power systems before the loss of power?”

“Extra? Just preparations for action, sir. Running shields up to full power for a readiness check and powering up hell-lance batteries.”

Would he lose partial or full capability on other ships as they prepared for this engagement? “Let me know when you have full maneuvering capability again.” As the image of
Spartan
’s captain vanished, Geary called the fleet. “All units, ensure when preparing for action that you power up systems sequentially rather than simultaneously so as to avoid putting extra strain on power junctions.”

Captain Smythe was already calling in. “Admiral, preliminary analysis shows that the power junctions on
Spartan
failed one by one very rapidly. After the first went, the power distribution system automatically tried to route all power through the remaining ones. That overloaded another, there was another attempt to redistribute power, which sent even more power through the remaining junctions, one of those failed, and so on. One of the watch-standers in engineering on
Spartan
activated the manual override in time to keep the automated systems from blowing every junction on the ship.”

Far from being able to relax himself, Geary now had an impressive headache developing. “I thought there were automated safeguards against that kind of thing.”

“There are, but the power junctions aren’t the only systems deteriorating, Admiral. In this case, the automated safeguards didn’t kick in. It may take some time to figure out why, but I’ve already sent emergency engineering notices to all ships so they can be alert for that happening to them.”

Another alert appeared. Smythe must have seen it on his display, too, as he looked to one side with a startled expression. “
Titan
just lost a main propulsion unit. Cause unknown.”

Battle was looming, he hadn’t even gone into action yet, and already his ships were taking damage.
Titan
was sluggish under the best of circumstances. Without one of her main propulsion units . . . “Captain Smythe, I need that propulsion unit online and working again within the next twenty minutes.”

“I don’t even know what’s wrong with it yet, Admiral! Let alone what repairs will be required!”

“Whatever it is and whatever it takes, you have twenty minutes.”

“Very well, Admiral. But it has been months since I warned you of this problem developing. Be aware that as our ships boost power to systems and run tests in preparation for an engagement, we may see a sudden surge in similar failures popping up all over the place.”

Smythe had barely signed off before his words proved prophetic. More alerts rippled across Geary’s display.
Dependable
, ironically enough, reporting a sudden degradation of its combat systems during pre-engagement testing.
Dragon
and
Victorious
each reporting the loss of a hell-lance battery due to power-system failures.
Witch
losing partial shields capability. More hell-lance power failures on heavy cruisers
Parapet
,
Chanfron
,
Diamond
, and
Ravelin
, light cruisers
Assault
,
Forte
, and
Retiarii
, and destroyers
Herebra
,
Cutlass
,
Stave
,
Rifle
, and
Flail
. Another shield problem, this time on the light cruiser
Rocket
.

Geary sat back, his eyes on the bear-cow armada closing in and now barely one light-minute behind the Alliance fleet. A complicated battle had just become even more complicated.

SEVEN

“THERE’S
one good thing about this,” Geary said as he waited through the last ten minutes before the first maneuver would take place.

“I’d love to know what that is,” Desjani replied.

“The bear-cows can’t tell how many of our ships are degraded and by how much. They have to treat every one of our ships as a full threat.”

“Except,” she pointed out, “the ships with degraded shields. The Kicks should be able to detect that.”

“Except those,” Geary conceded.

“What are you going to do if
Titan
can’t keep up?”

“Improvise.”

Desjani took a report, then nodded to Geary. “My comm officer swears on the honor of every ancestor he has that your comm system should be working perfectly, Admiral.”

“Admiral!” Captain Smythe looked weary, as if the last half hour had been a long day of intense work. “We’re helping to remotely direct repairs on the affected ships, but there are a lot of them.”

“I’m very well aware of that, Captain,” Geary replied. “How is
Titan
?”

“Commander Lommand has a fix in. He
thinks
it will work under stress.”

“Commander Lommand has a good track record,” Geary said. “I’m willing to trust his word on that. What about
Witch
? Can Captain Tyrosian get her shields fully up anytime soon?” The auxiliaries were as big a worry during a battle as they were a necessity between battles. As lightly protected as they were, any lowering of their defenses had to be a major concern.

“She’s working on it,” Smythe said.

That left nothing else to do but wait, watching as an occasional ship’s status report upgraded as the sudden equipment failures were repaired. No, that wasn’t the right thing to call them, Geary thought. “Sudden equipment failure” implied that there was something unexpected about them. But as he had learned not long ago, these ships had only been designed to function for a few years in the expectation that they would be destroyed in battle before that time was up. Geary, and the end of the war with the Syndicate Worlds, had thrown off that expectation by keeping these warships in the line of battle longer than they had been designed to operate. Now internal system components were wearing out. Smythe and his auxiliary force were working to get those components upgraded and replaced, but it would be a long and difficult process.

In the meantime, he had to go into battle with ships whose systems were increasingly prone to “sudden” failure after two, three, or even four years of combat life.

“All units, execute preplanned maneuver Alpha One at time three zero.” He had trouble keeping his eyes off
Titan
as the remaining time elapsed. What would happen when
Titan
tried to use that balky propulsion unit? His first experience with
Titan
had involved propulsion problems, and now here he was again.

And that first time, his grandnephew, Michael Geary, had probably died aboard his ship
Repulse
, buying time for
Titan
.

Not again. Not this time.

“Here we go,” Desjani announced, as
Dauntless
’s thrusters pushed her bow up and over, followed by the kick of main propulsion as the battle cruiser curved up and to port along with about a third of the other warships in the disintegrating fleet formation.

The bear-cows would see the maneuvers very quickly, within fifty seconds of when they took place, but it would take them a while to figure out what the human fleet was doing. Then the bear-cows would have to decide what to do.

Ships were forming up around
Dauntless
, which remained the guide ship for this portion of the fleet. Another third of the fleet had bent outward to starboard, forming around Captain Tulev’s
Leviathan
, while the remainder of the human ships dove downward, using Captain Badaya’s
Illustrious
as their guide.

Titan
kept up with Captain Badaya’s force, along with
Kupua
,
Alchemist
, and
Cyclops
. Accompanying the warships with Tulev’s
Leviathan
were
Tanuki
,
Domovoi
,
Witch
, and
Jinn
. Accompanying
Dauntless
were the four assault transports,
Tsunami
,
Typhoon
,
Mistral
, and
Haboob
. “If the Kicks want to go after lightly armed support ships, they won’t be able to focus on any one of the three formations,” Desjani observed. “Nice.”

The warships forming around
Dauntless
were taking up an oval-shaped formation, the assault transports on the side farthest from the bear-cows, as the path of the formation kept curving, turning back toward the Kick armada.

The humans were going at point one five light speed, while the bear-cows had pushed their own velocity up to point two three light speed. That had produced a closing rate for the Kicks of point zero eight light speed, but when the three new human formations turned toward the bear-cow force, the closing rate suddenly went up to nearly point four light speed. Geary saw the positions of the Kick warships on his display smear, going from pinpoints to blobs as the incredible closing velocity produced distortions in reality that the best human ingenuity could not compensate for. The human warships tore past the bear-cows before the enemy could even fully realize what had happened.

“They’re staying straight on,” Desjani said. “Heading for the spider-wolves.”

“Then let’s go help our new friends.” Geary sent new orders. “Immediate execute. All units in Gamma One One, come starboard one nine zero degrees, down zero two degrees, all units in Gamma One Two, come starboard one eight five degrees, all units in Gamma One Three, come up one three degrees.” He switched to personal comms. “Captain Tulev, Captain Badaya, once your formations come about, you are to operate independently. Concentrate on eliminating the escorts.”

Desjani raised her eyebrows at him. “
You
won’t be ordering maneuvers by Tulev’s and Badaya’s formations?”

“No. These Kicks, from what we’ve learned of them, believe in single-direction. If all of our ships are acting in accordance with my orders, we’ll be meeting them on their ground, one mind versus one mind. But if all of our ships operated independently, hundreds of minds working on their own, we’d be at a disadvantage against their coordinated actions.”

She nodded judiciously. “But three formations give us three heavy punches, while leaving the Kicks with three opponents who are working together but not in lockstep.”

“Four opponents,” Geary corrected. “If the spider-wolves don’t just try to avoid action. I’m hoping the differences in temperament among the formation commanders will further confuse the bear-cows. Tulev is methodical and steady, while Badaya is quick and more daring.”

“And you are unpredictable,” Desjani said.

“Let’s hope so.”

Up ahead, the spider-wolf formation had begun breaking up, the intricate pattern shattering into shards that seemed to be re-forming into smaller whorls of ships. But then the smaller groupings also came apart, every spider-wolf ship racing off on a different vector. “Looks like they fight as individuals,” Desjani remarked.

With the spider-wolf ships turning, accelerating, and maneuvering, the human sensors could finally get a look at their propulsion systems. “Hot stuff,” Desjani said admiringly.

That sums it up pretty well,
Geary thought. Baffles had spread outward, revealing impressive propulsion systems, and similar baffles at other points on the hulls had slid back to unmask powerful thrusters. The spider-wolf ships all seemed to have higher thrust-to-mass ratios than any human ships, giving them maneuverability close to that of the enigma ships. And they were all coming toward the bear-cow armada . . .

He clenched his jaw, thinking about how impossible it would be to avoid the spider-wolf ships swarming around the bear-cow formation. “They’d better stay clear of us because we can’t stay clear of them and attack.” That brought up something else, an omission that briefly appalled Geary as he thought of what might have happened. “All units, ensure your combat systems are set to not engage any spider-wolf ships unless specifically targeted in response to commands from me.”

The bear-cows, without the spider-wolf formation to concentrate on, had finally chosen another objective. The Kick formation was braking as fast as the bulk of their superbattleships allowed, while coming around and down toward the subformation led by Badaya. Captain Badaya’s ships in turn were rising to meet the bear-cows and pivoting so that a shield of warships remained between the bear-cow armada and the four auxiliaries with Badaya’s force.

The Kick sledgehammer spread out as it turned, two superbattleships anchoring each side while the other six remained near the center. “They’re not going to make this easy,” Desjani said.

Geary adjusted the course of his formation, aiming it toward one of the superbattleships on the side nearest to his force. “Immediate execute, all units in Gamma One One, reduce velocity to point zero eight light speed.”
Dauntless
and the ships with her pivoted, bringing their main propulsion units around to face in the direction the ships were going. Despite the inertial nullifiers, Geary felt pressure force him back into his seat as the propulsion units labored to brake the velocity of the warships.

The human subformations were all fairly close together despite the huge distances required for turns at the velocities they were traveling. With only about a light-minute separating the human forces, Geary could see what the others were doing almost as soon as it happened. Badaya had not yet changed course, still rising up straight toward an intercept with the bear-cows, while Tulev, like Geary, had steadied out, aiming for part of the enemy armada.

As his force rushed toward the bear-cow warships, Geary had a mental image of an enraged bull charging him, the horns and head made up of those colossal superbattleships. “Five minutes before we’re in range,” Desjani warned.

“Got it.” He waited, wanting the Kicks to see his course change too late to do anything about it. At three minutes to contact, the time felt right at last. “All units in Gamma One One, immediate execute turn starboard four degrees, up one degree. Engage enemy escorts as you enter range.”

The human formation turned slightly to the right and up, changing its vector from one aimed at the nearest superbattleship to a path that would clip the upper portion of the bear-cow formation about one-third of the way from the edge. The Kicks themselves had been braking as long as possible, trying to get down to engagement speed, but now were pivoting in the last moments before contact to place their heaviest armor and armament facing the human warships. The combined closing speed was down to point one eight light speed, well within human targeting parameters but just outside the bear-cow capabilities. “Too fast for them, but not by much,” Desjani commented in the moment before contact.

Specter missiles were leaping out to home on bear-cow warships, then in an instant of sequential shooting, hell lances were firing, grapeshot was hurled at the closest enemies, and, in a few cases, the lethal clouds of null fields engulfed portions of their targets.

Dauntless
shook with only one near miss, Geary’s eyes on his display as it updated the status of the bear-cow fleet. Six of the lesser bear-cow ships—four about heavy cruiser–sized, one light cruiser–sized, and one equivalent to a human battleship—had been hit hard. Two of the cruisers were gone, blown to pieces, the crippled battleship spun off, and the other stricken warships wobbled to try to keep up with their formation, shields, armor, and weapons badly battered.

Desjani’s shout and the blare of collision warning alarms sounded on top of one another. Startled, Geary saw twenty or thirty spider-wolf warships weave through his formation at tremendous velocity, some missing collisions with human ships by distances that would have scared the hell out of any human ship captain.

Once through the human ships, the spider-wolves pounced on the crippled bear-cow warships, making individual firing runs that rapidly reduced all of those damaged ships to wrecks.

“What. The.
Hell?
” Desjani glared at her display. “Those stupid spiders almost nailed us instead of the Kicks!”

“Captain?” Lieutenant Castries said in a voice that mingled awe and terror. “Our systems estimate the spider-wolf ships were on manual maneuvering controls. They weren’t being guided by automated systems when they went through us.”

“That’s impossible. Nobody could—” Desjani shook her head. “Nobody human. Admiral, those things are absolutely insane.”

“At least they’re on our side,” he said, trying to judge the right moment for his next maneuver. Tulev’s force had just gone through a lower edge of the bear-cow force, leaving five mangled Kick escorts in his wake though taking more damage to his own ships than Geary’s force had suffered because the closing velocity had fallen just within bear-cow targeting parameters. Geary saw another flock of spider-wolf ships weaving past any obstacles as they leaped to attack the victims of Tulev’s strike.

Badaya had turned down again at the last moment, his ships raking the bottom of the bear-cow formation and knocking out four escorts while inflicting significant damage on several others. But
Illustrious
and
Incredible
had suffered some hard blows as well from two of the superbattleships.