The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible (32 page)

THEY
came out of the jump point from Hua with every nerve tense, every weapon ready, waiting to see what awaited them at Pele.

“They’re here,” Desjani said.

“Not for long,” Geary replied.

The enigma flotilla was far off to the right of the Alliance vessels, nearly three light-hours from the place where the human fleet had arrived. The enigmas were heading toward the jump point for Midway at point one six light speed, away from Geary’s warships, and were not much more than one hour’s travel time away from being able to jump. Because the light from the arrival of the Alliance fleet would not get to them for more than three hours, the aliens would reach that jump point and jump for Midway before they knew the human fleet had arrived at Pele.

Though they might not care if their orders were to get to Midway and do damage before Geary’s fleet could catch up.

“Two hundred twenty-two enigma warships,” Desjani commented. “I guess that’s all they could scrape up.”

“Yes, I—” Geary stopped speaking as a memory came to the fore. “Three hundred thirty-three.”

“What?”

“Those humans we rescued from the enigma prison asteroid. Their numbers had been kept constant at three hundred thirty-three. And now this enigma force consists of two hundred twenty-two ships.”

She looked startled, then shrugged. “So they like repeating numbers.”

“Apparently. I wonder why?”

“Does it matter?”

“In terms of understanding them, yes.” He saw the disdain Desjani couldn’t quite conceal at the idea of bothering to continue trying to understand the enigmas. “Tanya, the more I understand them, the more I can outthink them and predict what they’re going to do. That enigma force is going to get to Midway quite a few hours before we can. I would love to be able to know what could divert and distract them once we get to Midway so that we have time to get the enigmas before they do too much damage.”

“All right. I’ll admit that’s a good reason to continue trying to figure them out. But regardless of how they think, how many hours they have at Midway to play with before we show up is partly dependent on what we do.” Desjani glanced at him, awaiting Geary’s decision.

He knew what she was asking, and also knew that every sailor in the fleet was wondering the same thing right now. Would the fleet continue its pursuit together, slowed by the battleships, auxiliaries, assault transports, and the captured superbattleship? Given the numbers of the enigma warships, that would be the prudent thing to do, keeping all of his firepower at hand. But being prudent might well mean arriving too late for that firepower to make a difference. “Help me set this up, Tanya. I want to split the fleet. All of the battle cruisers, all of the light cruisers, and half of the destroyers in a fast pursuit force, and all of the battleships, heavy cruisers, and the remaining destroyers following on at best speed.”

Her grin told him how much Desjani liked that plan before she faced her display, hands and fingers flying to help designate who went where.

Before doing the same, Geary called Captain Armus. “Captain, I’m going to be splitting the fleet and going on ahead with our fastest ships to try to disrupt the enigma attack on Midway. You will be in command of the rest of the fleet, and are to bring it on at the best speed you can manage to catch up with us at Midway. I’m going to need the firepower of those warships with you as soon as you can get them to me, but do not leave the captured superbattleship and the battleships towing it behind. Any questions?”

If Armus had been the sort of person to beam with delight, he would have done so now. Battleship commanders were looked down upon in this fleet as the steady but unremarkable type, with formation command positions almost always going to battle cruiser commanders. Geary had usually been forced to follow that same pattern since he was stuck with the ship commanders he had inherited, which meant that the battle cruiser commanders were more likely to be his best commanders. Unfortunately, some of them had also been among his worst commanders.

But rather than show any sign of celebration at an opportunity battleship commanders rarely received Armus merely nodded with slow deliberation and then, almost as an afterthought, threw in a salute. “I understand, Admiral. Thank you for your confidence in me.”

After the call ended, Desjani gave Geary another glance. “Armus? He and Jane Geary are toss-ups for that assignment in terms of seniority.”

“I know.”
I also know which one of them I can trust to stay with that superbattleship and its tow ships.

He didn’t say that out loud, but Tanya surely knew he was thinking it. She didn’t object or argue, though.

“All units, this is Admiral Geary. I will be dividing the fleet. The fast pursuit force will proceed to Midway to engage the enigmas while the main body of the fleet follows. Formation orders will be going out momentarily.”

“Done,” Desjani said. “How’s yours? Oh, hell, let me finish it.”

“I had to talk to people,” Geary said defensively.

“Yes. You’re the admiral. Now that you’ve told me and everyone else what to do, let us help you do it.”

Maneuvering problems that would have taxed the minds of humans and taken long hours to work out could be done in moments with the assistance of the automated systems. If the person doing the work also had a good intuitive grasp of maneuvering and what could most easily go where, it went even faster.

Desjani had a very good intuitive grasp of maneuvering.

“Check it,” she asked him.

He did a quick sanity check of her work, knowing that small problems would be corrected automatically by the fleet’s maneuvering systems. In terms of the big picture . . . “It looks great.” Two more taps on the comm system, and the maneuvering orders were flying out to every ship in the fleet.

Geary had specified an oval formation for the pursuit force, with one broad side facing forward, and the designated ships raced to get into position. Lined up along the center were the battle cruisers, where he could easily redistribute them to anywhere else in the formation. After the losses of
Invincible
and
Brilliant
he had only fourteen left, and of those,
Illustrious
and
Incredible
had been chewed up at Honor. While they were technically combat capable again after a tremendous amount of repair work, Geary had to be careful what he did with those two.

Around the battle cruisers ranged the light cruisers, while the destroyers formed up on the outer edges as well as the front and back of the formation. “All units in pursuit force, immediate execute accelerate to point two five light speed.”

The pursuit force began pulling away from the main body while the battleships, heavy cruisers, and destroyers were still getting into position in another oval, this one centered on the captured superbattleship, the assault transports and auxiliaries, and the battleships.

Geary realized that his pursuit force was rapidly gaining on the small spider-wolf formation, which had remained in the lead thus far. “General Charban, Emissary Rione, we need to notify the spider-wolf delegation that this force is heading back to Alliance space at high speed to engage the enigmas.”

Rione answered. “That message may exceed our vocabulary, Admiral, but we’ll do our best.”

What else? Something behind him. Another call. “Admiral Lagemann.”

Lagemann looked more than a little haggard but still cheerful. Given the rough living conditions on the captured ship, Geary was only surprised that the other admiral didn’t look worse. “I’m going ahead. Captain Armus is in charge of the formation around your ship. He won’t let anything through to you.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Lagemann replied. “If something does get through, I’ve got an impressive force of Marines to defend my ship. I never imagined going into combat in something like this.”

“We’ll try to keep you out of combat.”

“Well,” Lagemann said, waving a hand around to indicate his surroundings, “if worse comes to worst, at least there’s a lot of armor and a lot of mass between us and whoever is attacking. Did I tell you that I’ve christened my ship?”

“No,” Geary said. “You gave it a name?”

“Yes. A fitting name. I’m tired of hearing my ship called BKS or LCCO or RBST or—”

“RBST?” Geary asked.

“Really Big Slow Target. I came up with a much better name.” Lagemann grinned. “This is the latest
Invincible
, Admiral.”

Lagemann might be pleased by the joke but Geary didn’t think that Desjani or a lot of other sailors would be. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Yes, I do. First, because it’s so damned big and hard to destroy. Second, because it’s already been defeated and captured once. It’s already been proven not to be truly
Invincible
. Maybe the Kicks thought of it that way, but we showed them wrong.” Lagemann smiled again. “So you see, naming it
Invincible
is our acknowledgment of their error in thinking they could construct a ship too big and too tough to be defeated.”

In a strange way, that almost made sense. “You’re assuming that the living stars appreciate irony.”

“Good heavens, Admiral, look at the universe. If whatever created and oversees it doesn’t appreciate irony, how else do you explain some of the things in the universe? How else do explain us, the human race?”

Admiral Lagemann had a point. “How does your crew feel about the name?” It wasn’t a very big crew, especially compared to the size of the superbattleship, only about a hundred officers and sailors plus the Marines.

“Surprisingly accepting,” Lagemann said. “Some of them are off of the last
Invincible
, and all of them like the idea of trying to break the curse of that name. And, of course, the Marines are all in favor of being a threat magnet.”

“Really?” Geary asked.

“All right, the Marines aren’t actually all that thrilled, but they still like the thickness of the armor on this thing. Excuse me, on the new
Invincible
.”

“I’ll say good luck, then, and we’ll see you at Midway.” Geary broke the connection, looking over at Desjani. “Did you hear any of that?”

She had a horrified expression on her face, which gradually shaded into mere disbelief. “He’s willing to do that? He’s crazier than Benan.”

“If he calls that hulk
Invincible
, then the fleet can’t name any new ships
Invincible
, right?”

Desjani’s expression shifted to calculation. “Right. I think. And those superbattleships are very hard to kill.” She gestured toward her display. Geary saw that Desjani had opened a large virtual window that showed a view of the bear-cow ship—the
Invincible
, he corrected himself. Close-up, he saw the same armored hull he had last viewed this way during the Marine assault. The impression of strength was overwhelming in that surface of metal and composites, in some places pitted and scored by hits and in most others smooth and bright so that the stars themselves seemed to reflect in the dark surface.

“How do you make armor that thick?” Geary wondered.

“I imagine that’s one of the things our own engineers and scientists will try to learn,” Desjani said. “It’s not my thing. I like speed and agility as well as power. But even I look at that hull, the size of that ship, and think, ‘Wow, that is cool.’”

“But it’s not really invincible.”

“No, of course not. But that Admiral Lagemann may be right. It’s a way of saying, ‘We get it, living stars. We know this name doesn’t fit even this ship because we’ve proven that it doesn’t.’”

They were interrupted by a call. Geary gazed into the solemn face of Dr. Nasr. “Two more of the bear-cows died during our transit here from Hua,” the chief medical officer said. “As nearly as we can tell, they were oversedated, but that’s not a certainty.”

That left three living Kick prisoners. Geary looked away, feeling sick inside. “Why won’t they let us save them?”

“We’ve discussed this, Admiral. To them, we’re only saving them for a future meal with fresh meat.”

“Doctor, I’d like your honest opinion. What’s the right thing to do here?”

Nasr sighed. “Admiral, the guiding rule of my profession is not to harm. That sounds like a simple rule, but any doctor with any experience will tell you that it can lead to severe dilemmas if you take the rule seriously. We tried to do the right thing as we saw it, to treat the injuries of the wounded bear-cows and save their lives. And we did that not just out of self-interest but because we truly wanted a chance to establish communications with their species. But you know the saying about the road to hell. Our best intentions have created a situation where every option is bad.

“They’re going to die, Admiral. We don’t know enough about their metabolism, about their bodies. Either we will oversedate them, or we will undersedate them. A moment of consciousness, of awareness, and the bear cows will end their own lives. Enough oversedation, and they’ll die anyway.”

Geary stared at the doctor. “You’re telling me I should let them die?”

“No. I can’t do that. What I am telling you is that they will die, the only question being when and where. You can order me to reduce sedation, or order me to increase it. Or tell me that we should continue to try to tread the narrow line to keep them going as long as possible.”