Triumphant (Genesis Fleet, The)

by Jack Campbell

  * * *

  • • •

  Time didn’t mean much inside the facility, where every compartment was either pitch black but for minimal lights on the battle armor, or dimly illuminated by emergency lanterns whose batteries hadn’t quite given out yet. Days meant nothing. Life was divided into too-short periods of rest, longer periods of watching and waiting, and short, tense times spent moving from one hiding place to another.

  “You ever think about home, ma’am?”

  Mele shrugged despite knowing the gesture would be invisible inside her armor and in the gloom that filled the compartment they were in. “Not really. You mean the place or the people?”

  “The people, I guess,” Corporal Lamar said. “I mean, I knew when I left I might never make it back, but I guess I didn’t understand it. Does that make sense?”

  “Sure it does,” Mele said. “Where was home?”

  “Old Earth.” Lamar sounded wistful, and sad. “Where I grew up it was really hot and dry, and not much to see except some mountains in the distance. A lot of nothing as far as the eye can see, my dad used to say. And there was nothing there for me. Just sit around on your butt all day because there weren’t enough jobs. My mom and dad didn’t want me to leave, but they also wanted me to have a chance to do something, you know? I thought about staying, and then someday realizing on the day I died that I’d never really done anything. So I left.”

  “I guess a lot of people left home for reasons like that,” Mele said.

  “I guess. New worlds, new chances. But I still miss the old. I wonder what time it is back home? It could be night and they could be sleeping, or they could be eating breakfast. I wish you could taste the hash my mom could make. Or maybe right now they’re standing in the afternoon sun and looking up at the sky. Wouldn’t that be funny?” Lamar said. “If they was looking up thinking about me at the same moment I was here thinking about them?”

  “Maybe they are,” Mele said. She always felt a little uncomfortable when her people needed to unburden themselves and sought her out, but that was part of the job. If they were willing to risk death at her orders, the least she could do was listen to them when they got homesick.

  “I wrote them,” Lamar said. “It takes months for ships to carry a message home, doesn’t it?”

  “Three or four months from here, I think,” Mele said.

  “I told them I was a Marine now. I bet that’ll surprise them! Attached some pictures of me in uniform and everything. And some pictures of the planet from orbit. Planets sure look nice from orbit, huh?”

  “I’ve seen some that didn’t look too nice even from that far off,” Mele said.

  “But this one looks nice. Beautiful. Worth fighting for,” Lamar said. “Right?”

  “Right. Did you tell them about the fight at Kosatka?” Mele asked.

  “Just a little. Like, we fought, and it was kind of rough, but we won. And what it was like on the ship and all.”

  “You did real good there. And here. I might have to make you a sergeant.”

  Lamar laughed. “Thanks. But I didn’t . . . I didn’t say much about it. It’s kind of hard to talk about.”

  “That’s true for a lot of people,” Mele said, feeling the unyielding metal against the back of her armor and remembering similar sensations on the orbital facility at Kosatka.

  “But I can talk to you about it. Or Glitch.”

  “We were there. It’s like a special club that you get into by surviving and getting the hell scared out of you and watching stuff that you don’t want to remember.” Mele reached over to pat the armor over Lamar’s shoulders. “Your mom and dad won’t get it. And that’s good. Because it means what you went through mattered. They’ll never have to face the same thing.”

  “I guess. Thanks, Major. Have you got anybody? In another star system, maybe?”

  “I’ve got you apes,” Mele said. “That’s enough trouble and responsibility for anyone.”

  “Are we going to make it, Major? Seems like it’s been forever we’ve been doing this, fighting and running and picking up new ammo and power supplies where we hid them.”

  “We don’t have to hold out forever,” Mele said. “Just until they get low on supplies or until help arrives for us.”

  “If help is coming, I hope it gets here soon,” Lamar said. “I’d kinda like to tell my parents I survived this fight, too.”

  “You and me both,” Mele said. “We’ll make it. Don’t let any of the others see you doubting that. If you don’t believe we can win this, they won’t believe it.”

  “Do you believe it, Major?”

  “Sure I do.”

  Mele wondered when she’d gotten so good at lying that she even sounded sincere to herself.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Major?”

  Mele Darcy grabbed for her rifle as she woke from a nap so deep and dark it had held no dreams. Her heart abruptly pounding, Mele focused on Sergeant Giddings, calming her breathing as she realized that no immediate danger threatened. “What’s up?”

  “I got a link with Captain Batra.”

  “Tie me in.” A moment later her comm status light glowed green. At this point in the fight for the facility the link was voice only, of course. Images took up a lot more bandwidth, and were that much harder to get through enemy jamming and that much easier to trace. “Darcy here.”

  “Batra here,” he replied. From his voice, Captain Batra was feeling the strain. Not that she could fault him for that. “I’m still active, with seven surviving soldiers in my group. Nine hours ago I made contact with Lieutenant Nasir’s group. He still had eight with him.”

  “Good,” Mele said.

  “We decided against merging groups. But about fifteen minutes after we separated, my group detected fighting in the general direction that Lieutenant Nasir’s group had gone. I haven’t been able to reestablish contact since then.”

  Damn. Her momentary relief at knowing Nasir was all right dwindled into nothing, because she couldn’t afford to feel despair. “Okay. Thanks for the update. Continue operations.” There weren’t any other orders she could give.

  “Under—”

  Mele’s comm status light went red.

  “We lost the link,” Sergeant Giddings said.

  “I saw. Glitch, have you heard anything from Lieutenant Nasir’s group in the last nine hours? Even a momentary connection?”

  “No, Major. Nothing. I had really short comms with Savak’s group and Gunny Moon’s, but not Lieutenant Nasir’s. You want me to try to link with them?”

  “Yes. See if you can find them. Captain Batra reported detecting a fight near where Lieutenant Nasir’s group would have been, and he hasn’t been able to contact them again since then.”

  “Oh.” Sergeant Giddings nodded, the gesture tired. “I hope they’re okay. He’s a decent officer. We need people like that now.”

  “We always need people like that,” Mele said. “And there are never enough of them.”

  “Corporal Yoshida was with the Lieutenant,” Giddings said. “If something happened to the Lieutenant, Yoshi will get through to us.”

  “Right. See if you can get ahold of him or Lieutenant Nasir.” If Nasir and Yoshi were both gone, the entire group might have been wiped out, like Lieutenant Killian’s. Mele shook her head, trying to dislodge the dark thoughts gathering there. Maintaining hope was hard here, buried inside the facility, surrounded by metal and composites and the ever-present gloom, wearing battle armor that’d become uncomfortable days ago, breathing air and drinking water recycled by the armor from your own waste. She checked their location, wondering if she dared move her group to some spot next to the exterior of the facility. That’d be dangerous, exposing them to possible detection if an enemy warship was watching that location, but she really wanted to see the stars, to know that something else still existed outside
of this dark, claustrophobic maze that she’d doomed the people under her command to endure. And to die in.

  * * *

  • • •

  Time didn’t exist in jump space, they said. In order for time to exist, something had to exist to create it. Entropy, maybe. And there was nothing in jump space. Nothing that humans could measure. But maybe the moment even a single human entered jump space then time also sprang into existence there. Because humans measured time within them, in the actions of cells and organs and thoughts. “What is time?” some philosopher had asked on one of the Old Colonies, and then answered himself. “We are.” Scientists laughed at that, but they’d yet to come up with a better, provable answer.

  What time was it now? Lochan Nakamura wondered. What time was this moment back on Old Earth where humans had first looked up at the stars and wondered what lay among them? What time was it back at Kosatka, and what time would it be when they arrived at Glenlyon?

  Once they saw what awaited them at Glenlyon, would time be defined in only two ways that mattered, “soon enough” or “too late”?

  In contrast to the apparently limitless nothing of jump space outside, there wasn’t all that much room on the bridge of a destroyer, and just about every square centimeter of the bulkheads and overhead seemed to be covered with something important. Lochan did his best to find a spot that didn’t seem to be blocking anything or in anyone’s way, waiting uncomfortably for the inevitable moment when someone would need something that he was standing in front of.

  Freya Morgan stood by him, apparently unconcerned about being in anyone’s way. From the confidence with which she looked about her, she might have been an admiral in command of the entire force, waiting for the moment to declare her authority.

  “You don’t have any secret orders about this, do you?” Lochan muttered to Freya.

  She grinned. “I’m just keeping them on their toes, wondering exactly who I am and what I’m up to. It’s good tactics to surprise people who don’t realize what’s under what they see. But who am I lecturing to? You’re better at it than I am.”

  “Me?” Was she serious? Lochan’s thoughts and the conversation were interrupted before he could say more.

  “Leaving jump space in ten minutes,” one of the watch standers on the Asahi reported to the captain. “Ship is at full combat readiness.”

  “Very well,” Commander Miko Sori replied.

  Benten’s commanding officer had impressed Lochan as a no-nonsense sort, almost severe in her attitude, who’d surprised him with flashes of sudden dry humor. There was no doubt who she was underneath it all. She was the captain and she knew her job. Just like most of the rest aboard Asahi, Sori had gained her training and experience in either Earth Fleet or one of the much smaller fleets once maintained by the individual Old Colonies.

  Lochan glanced at the nearest display, one showing the external view, which in jump space was nothing except formless gray. He’d asked many people, some crew members of civilian ships and some sailors on warships and some scientists of various sorts, just what that gray nothingness was, and the answer was always the same. Nothing. As far as human science could tell, jump space contained nothing. “Do you ever wonder,” he asked Freya in a low voice, “why the nothing in jump space looks gray? Shouldn’t it look black?”

  “Black is something, though,” Freya said. “Our brains know that. Maybe that’s why we see nothing as gray.”

  Lochan didn’t reply, startled into silence. But he heard gasps from several of those on the bridge as two lights suddenly flared amid the gray nothingness of jump space. The lights blazed brilliantly for a moment, then faded as quickly as they’d appeared.

  “Twin lights?” one of Asahi’s officers asked, amazed. “Has anyone ever reported seeing two lights at once?”

  Commander Sori replied, her intrigued gaze on her own display. “Not that I know of. Make sure all data concerning those lights is compiled. We’ll want to forward this sighting to scientific institutions.”

  “Yes, Captain, but . . .” The officer hesitated. “There are no data. Nothing except the lights themselves.”

  Frowning, Sori touched her display, activating commands. Her frown remained as she read the results. “Nothing.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lochan said. “We saw lights. Those lights had to be made by something.”

  Commander Sori turned to look at him. “That’s what you’d think, wouldn’t you? But you can view the data yourself. Our sensors recorded the lights that our eyes saw. But there’s nothing else. No source. No energy. The light simply existed.”

  “I’d heard,” Freya said, “that the first trips into jump space didn’t see any lights at all, but that they started to appear and have become more frequent as more human ships traveled jump space.”

  “That’s correct.” Commander Sori gazed intently at her display. “Whatever they are, their appearance may be linked to human presence. But how? To know that, we’d have to know what they are. And there is no clue to that at all.”

  “Perhaps the lack of clues is a clue,” Freya said. “Perhaps they point to the lights being something that has no origin in the science we know.”

  “If so, there are no answers there that can be confirmed by the science we know.” Sori raised an eyebrow at Freya. “And, if so, what about this ship would inspire two such spirits to escort it?”

  Freya smiled. “Perhaps my father sent them to keep an eye on us.”

  “I do not think even Donal Morgan has that much clout with the angels and spirits.”

  “I assure you, he thinks he does.”

  Sori smiled only slightly, maintaining a carefully diplomatic expression rather than openly laughing at the prime minister of Eire. “And what of you, Lochan Nakamura? I’m told that you’re a wise man.”

  “Who said that?” Lochan asked, startled again.

  “You don’t think it’s true?”

  “I’d never call myself wise,” he said.

  “Perhaps it is true, then,” Commander Sori said. “What do you think of the lights?”

  Lochan made a face. “I’ve learned that when you don’t understand what something is, it’s a big mistake to assume you can be certain what it isn’t. All you know is what you don’t know.”

  “Ah, you’re a follower of Zen?”

  “I . . . don’t really know anything about that,” Lochan said.

  “And you admit it?” another officer said. “You must be a master of Zen!”

  The laughter that followed was interrupted by an alert. “Leaving jump space in two minutes, Captain.”

  “Everyone, focus on your tasks,” Sori ordered. “We don’t know what awaits us at Glenlyon.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Rob Geary had been making another failed attempt to get some sleep when an urgent alert sounded in his stateroom, the noise echoing like a herald of doom. “Captain! Four destroyers have arrived at the jump point from Jatayu,” Ensign Reichert reported, her voice remarkably level for someone conveying such terrible news.

  Four destroyers.

  They couldn’t possibly be new forces from Glenlyon purchased by Leigh Camagan. There hadn’t been time for her to get to Old Earth and those ships to return here. Camagan was probably a long ways from even reaching Old Earth yet.

  And Kosatka had only one destroyer, with no prospects of gaining more anytime in the near future.

  Which meant the new arrivals were almost certainly enemy.

  In the few seconds it took him to reach the bridge, Rob thought about what these new threats meant. Four more warships, each equal to Saber. Survival was no longer an option. There was no way Saber could outrun and outdodge that many opponents. The only question remaining was how much longer Saber would survive.

  He wouldn’t surrender her. He’d get as much of the crew off as possible before t
he last fight, but Saber wouldn’t become an enemy prize to be used against other worlds. Rob felt an emptiness inside him as he realized what that resolve might well mean, that he would never see his wife and family again, that the new child born to Ninja would never know their father.

  And yet, somehow, he kept a calm and steady demeanor as he walked onto the bridge. Perhaps he’d gone numb inside, overwhelmed emotions shutting down to avoid running out of control. “What do we have on them?”

  “None of the destroyers are broadcasting identification,” Lieutenant Cameron said.

  That wasn’t a surprise. Enemy ships had been doing that sometimes in recent battles like that at Kosatka. “How long until they get here?” Rob asked.

  “We’re . . . Captain?” Lieutenant Cameron’s voice broke like that of a startled teenager.

  “What?” Rob tried not to snap at Cameron, who had every right to be rattled at the moment.

  “Sir, our sensors are giving a tentative ID on one of the destroyers as the Shark from Kosatka.”

  “The Shark?” How could the enemy have captured Kosatka’s remaining warship? “How good is that ID?”

  “Eighty percent, Captain. Just upped to ninety-two percent.”

  Lieutenant Commander Shen dashed onto the bridge and dropped into the executive officer’s chair beside Geary’s command chair. “Give me the data.”

  “On its way, XO.”

  Shen spent a long moment staring at her display. “I think the ID is right, Captain. It’s based on the repairs visible around Shark’s stern. Those repairs sure as hell look like what I remember. But there’s no sign of new battle damage on her.”

  “Kosatka surrendered?” Rob asked, rage appearing inside him. “After all we sacrificed to help them, they gave up and turned their ship over to—”

  “Captain! Incoming message from one of the new warships! It was sent tight beam to us so only we’d see it.”