The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible (15 page)

“Immediate execute all units in Gamma One One come up one nine zero degrees,” Geary ordered. “Increase velocity to point one light speed.” He would bring his subformation up and over, back down in more than a half circle to close on the rear of the bear-cows, who had now slowed to point zero nine light speed.

An alert pulsed red. “
Titan
has lost that propulsion unit again,” Geary said, adding some curses under his breath.

Badaya’s formation had suddenly become limited in its ability to accelerate, slow, and turn. The bear-cows must have spotted the change in
Titan
because they began coming around to intercept Badaya’s force.
Incredible
staggered into position near
Titan
as one of its own main propulsion units gave way after the damage it had suffered a short time earlier, and almost at the same moment
Illustrious
suffered shield failures along most of her hull.

Geary snapped out more orders, bringing his subformation in a tighter turn, the moan of the inertial nullifiers becoming audible along with the groaning of
Dauntless
’s hull under the strain. The other warships matched
Dauntless
, but the assault transports swung wider, unable to equal the maneuvers of the combatants.

If he kept this up, he would come into contact with the bear-cow warships with his formation disrupted and the assault transports dangerously exposed.

“Admiral?” Desjani asked.

“It can’t be done,” he muttered. “Not that way.” But he had to do something to relieve the pressure on Badaya, who was unsuccessfully trying to hold his formation together as it turned to evade the head-on rush of the bear-cow armada. Tulev’s subformation had been caught out of position when the Kicks turned toward Badaya, and now had to chase back into contact. Tulev couldn’t make it in time to disrupt the attack on Badaya’s subformation.

Geary had five battle cruisers in this subformation.
Dauntless
,
Daring
,
Victorious
,
Intemperate
, and
Adroit
. His hand hit the comm controls. “All units in Gamma One One, immediate execute come up two zero degrees. Shift formation guide to
Warspite
.
Daring
,
Victorious
,
Intemperate
, and
Adroit
, match your movements to
Dauntless
.”

He turned to Desjani. “Captain, take
Dauntless
through the middle of the enemy formation at the best velocity you can manage.”

She smiled in a baring of the teeth that would have surely unnerved any bear-cows who could have seen it. “Let’s go!” she told her crew, then brought
Dauntless
screaming around, accelerating through a turn even tighter than that before, the other four battle cruisers following.

Geary watched red-line warnings pop up on his display as Desjani pushed her ship into stress danger zones. Somehow, the other four battle cruisers stayed with her as the tiny formation dove straight for the bear-cow formation.

They went through at blinding speed, main propulsion units still at maximum. One of the superbattleships and a score of lighter yet still powerful Kick warships fired everything they had at the plummeting battle cruisers, but Desjani had gotten the relative velocity up close to point two light speed, throwing off the aim of the enemy. The human warships replied with lightning-fast barrages that pummeled two of the Kick battleships.

Then they were past, Geary reassuming control of
Dauntless
and bringing the battle cruisers back around to try to rejoin the rest of his formation.

A screen of spider-wolf ships had appeared between Badaya’s force and the oncoming bear-cows, but they could only inflict minor damage before scattering in the face of the superbattleships.

Geary braced himself for serious losses, knowing that Badaya had been cursed with bad luck but had also fumbled this situation, reacting too slowly to the damage and not turning away far enough and fast enough. Nothing could stop the Kick armada now from inflicting major damage on Badaya’s ships, not when those superbattleships were so hard to hurt or turn aside.

Without warning, battleships
Dreadnaught
and
Orion
broke away from Badaya’s subformation, closely followed by
Dependable
and
Conqueror
.
Relentless
,
Reprisal
,
Superb
, and
Splendid
went after the other battleships in a rush, every battleship in Badaya’s subformation now coming steadily and ponderously around on vectors aimed straight at the oncoming enemy.

The words of Captain Mosko came back to him.
It’s what battleships do.

“They’ll get torn to pieces,” Geary whispered.
My grandniece. Going to her death under my command just as her brother did. May our ancestors forgive me.

Desjani wore a look of tragic pride. “Yes. But they might enable the rest of Badaya’s force to get clear of that charge.”

His eyes searched the display, looking for a miracle. Tulev’s subformation still too far off, the spider-wolves only nibbling at the edges of the bear-cow force, his own battle cruisers climbing and turning back to join the rest of his subformation, which was still coming around to meet him and continue on toward the rear of the Kick armada.

No miracles. Just men and women doing all they could, knowing it wouldn’t be enough.

“What are they—?” Desjani burst out.

Geary’s gaze went back to the eight battleships making a suicide charge. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing, hundreds of projectiles being launched from those battleships, curving on trajectories aimed at the oncoming bear-cow force less than a minute from contact. “Kinetic projectiles? In a ship-to-ship engagement? That’s—” He got it then. “Brilliant.”

Normally, ships could easily dodge dumb projectiles fired from a distance, but the battleships had pumped out every kinetic projectile they had, a field of death rushing toward the enemy armada. The battleships had even launched their big kinetic rounds, the ones called BFRs by the crews, which rarely got used because of the wide devastation they could cause when dropped on a planet, but they were now on trajectories going straight at the Kick superbattleships. Only a collection of that many human battleships could have pumped out a sufficient number of kinetic projectiles quickly enough to force evasive action by an armada the size of the bear-cow force.

If the Kicks didn’t evade, if they held course to catch Badaya’s formation, they would wade right through that barrage, and surely no one—

Geary watched with growing amazement as the final seconds to contact ticked down, the human battleships now also hurling out specter missiles as fast as they could launch them, the Kicks holding steady on their course and firing their own missiles. Just as in the bear-cow videos they had seen, no one would waver, no one would break the shield wall, no one would step away from their place in the line of battle.

As the two forces and the kinetic bombardment merged, space filled with chaos too intense for the fleet’s sensors to pick out what was happening. Geary could only stare at his display, appalled by the amount of destruction.

One human battleship burst out of the bedlam, broadcasting extensive damage but still moving.
Dreadnaught
. On her heels came
Orion
, lurching with grim determination in
Dreadnaught
’s wake.
Dependable
and
Conqueror
followed, both amazingly lightly harmed. Then
Relentless
,
Reprisal
,
Superb
, and
Splendid
in a rush, armor pitted, shields in shreds, many weapons out of commission, but still going.

The bear-cow armada had kept on, but the energies erupting in its center had disrupted the other ships, breaking the charge. And Badaya had finally gotten the right maneuver in, twisting his formation up and climbing so that his ships were out of range of most of the surviving enemy warships as they blundered past.

Geary finally understood what had happened. Not a miracle, but something unexpected. “They blew a hole through the Kick formation. They made it through because everything in front of them got pulverized by that barrage instead of evading.” Why hadn’t they evaded? Just because bear-cow tactics didn’t allow for individual action? Had the bear-cow commander been surprised by the new tactic? Had that commander tried to order evasive action but been unable to do so in time, while the individual Kick ships held to their places in the formation?

“Three of the superbattleships are gone, along with a lot of the ships that were near them.” Desjani’s pride was now mixed with glee. “May the living stars remember what happened here!”

“They’re not beaten yet,” Geary warned, watching the bear-cows re-forming. After every loss, they had simply tightened their formation, and now they did it again, ending up with a much smaller formation but still clearly ready to fight.

He could hear cheers echoing through
Dauntless
as word spread of what the battleships had done. There would be cheers on every ship in the fleet right now. For the moment, morale wasn’t a problem.

“Why didn’t they dodge?” Desjani demanded, and Geary realized that she was referring not to the human battleships but to the bear-cow warships. “The Kicks must have known what that many kinetic projectiles of that mass could do . . .” She turned a look of dawning understanding on him. “They don’t. They don’t have kinetic projectiles aboard their own ships, they don’t use them because they have a defense against their being used against planets. Since ships can usually dodge rocks easily, there would have been no justification for their warships carrying rocks.”

“The oldest trap in the book,” Geary said. “Assuming that the enemy’s capabilities, tactics, and intentions match your own. Thank the living stars that gives us an edge.” They would need that edge, but he doubted that tactic would work a second time now that the bear-cows had seen it used.

The five battle cruisers merged with the rest of subformation Gamma One One again,
Dauntless
resuming her status as guide ship. The Kicks had swung wide to the left and up, trying to catch Badaya’s force, but they were still hampered by the sluggishness of the surviving superbattleships. Badaya was accelerating straight up, unable to pull clear of contact with ships limited in their propulsion capability, but prolonging the time needed for the bear-cows to catch him. Tulev’s force had come up slightly to aim for an intercept with the Kicks’ new course, while the spider-wolf ships swarmed everywhere, zipping through human formations with crazy nonchalance and ripping apart any bear-cow ships that had been knocked out of the armada by damage.

The eight battleships from Badaya’s formation were coming up and swinging back to try to catch up with their formation again,
Dependable
and
Conqueror
screening their more badly damaged sister ships, a welter of spider-wolf ships forming a weaving barrier between them and the bear-cow armada.
Who ordered that charge?
Geary wondered.
Did Badaya tell them to make that move, or did Jane Geary start it on her own initiative? Whoever did it, it was the right decision. And who came up with the idea of using their kinetic projectiles against this enemy?

Putting aside questions he couldn’t address now, Geary brought his formation nearly straight on, aiming to catch the bear-cow force as it steadied out on the new intercept with Badaya. He should get there minutes after Tulev hit them.

“How have the spider-wolves kept the Kicks at bay?” Desjani wondered. “From their firepower and their tactics, they could never have stopped the Kicks from parading through this star system and using one of those jump points.”

“Good question. We’ll have to ask them once this is all over.” He could see the damage and casualty reports coming in from the eight battleships now, feeling a heaviness inside as the fleet systems automatically totaled up everything. The battleships had paid a heavy price for their success.

Here and there on his display, new damage warnings flickered to life as aging systems overstressed by the demands of combat failed on Alliance warships. But the burst of failures earlier had subsided. These failures weren’t good, but at least his entire fleet wasn’t falling apart as he watched.

Tulev’s formation tore past one side of the enemy armada, hammering at the bear-cow warships there and knocking out two more. But the attack barely registered on the superbattleship there, and the armada continued its charge toward Badaya’s force, closing at an increasing rate as the enemy continued to accelerate, and Badaya was held to about point zero six light speed by the propulsion casualties on
Titan
and
Incredible
.

Geary aimed his formation for the bottom side of the bear-cow force,
Dauntless
shuddering once again with hits and near misses as the Kicks threw out a heavy barrage. He half heard the damage reports streaming in to Desjani, telling of shields penetrated, hits on the battle cruiser’s light armor, and a few penetrations but no systems losses. On his display, similar reports flowed in from the other ships in his formation. None had been hit hard, but many had taken damage.

One more bear-cow ship was limping, unable to stop a spiral out of its formation that left it prey to the spider-wolf swarm. Other enemy warships showed damage.

But it wasn’t enough to turn aside the enemy.