The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible

by Campbell, Jack

  Geary fought to keep from frowning. “A terrible plan?”

  “Yes, sir. There’s a lot of guesswork, and if the enemy behaves differently than we expect, it won’t work. And if it doesn’t work, we could be in serious trouble.”

  He was frowning now. Geary felt a mix of anger and unhappiness. He had hoped a solution had been found, and her first words had seemed to confirm those hopes. But if Tanya thought the plan was that bad . . . “So we need to try something else.”

  “No.” Desjani shook her head, leaned back, and sighed with contentment. “First, because I already put a lot of work into this, and second, because even though it’s a terrible plan, it’s a lot better than any other idea that anybody else has come up with. You don’t even want to look at what the combat systems developed using their little artificial minds.”

  “That bad?” Geary asked, his upset gone.

  “Try projected fifty-percent losses.” She shook her head once more, this time in disgust. “I can’t believe people used to call that stuff artificial intelligence. It’s still dumber than a deck plate.”

  “We couldn’t aim our weapons without it,” Geary pointed out. “Not with engagement envelopes measured in milliseconds. And I wouldn’t want to try maneuvering at the velocities we move without automated assist systems.”

  “Yeah, but that’s all physics! We can model that, after we figure it out. But actually thinking? Coming up with something new? Hah! Fast and stupid is still stupid. It just gets to stupid a lot quicker than humans could on their own. Which, I admit, is an accomplishment,” she added, “because we’re pretty damn good at stupid.”

  “That’s something to take pride in,” Geary agreed.

  “I’ll take whatever I can get.” She waved one hand toward him. “Anyway, your plan isn’t nearly as stupid as any other alternatives anyone has thought of. Congratulations.”

  He studied the display again, seeing every uncertainty, every assumption that Desjani had been forced to incorporate into the plan. If and if and if. It was up to him to decide whether to go with it despite all of those ifs. But they wouldn’t learn all the answers even if they stayed here for months dodging the alien armada. His instincts told him that they needed to move fast, before fleet supplies diminished, before morale sank even lower, before the bear-cows could deploy even more forces, using their overwhelming numbers and resources. “We’ll do it.”

  Desjani nodded, her eyes closed for a moment. “Oh, by the way, you left out one step in the plan.”

  “What step was that?”

  “The one where we pray this works, Admiral.”

  FOUR

  GEARY sat in his fleet command seat on the bridge of Dauntless, watching the distance reading to the nearest alien fortress scrolling downward rapidly. From as far off as the fleet was, the fortress wasn’t yet growing in size at any appreciable rate, but Geary still had the sensation that Dauntless and the entire fleet were diving down toward it. An odd sensation, born of human instincts that came from ancient ancestors walking the surface of a planet far distant.

  Since the fleet was on an intercept course with the jump point guarded by the alien fortress, it was curving slightly around the edge of the star system. The fortress physically appeared to be just slightly to the right of Geary, or just off the starboard bows of the human ships. They were still forty light-minutes from that fortress. Since Geary had chosen to hold the speed of the human fleet to point one light speed, it would be nearly seven hours until they reached that fortress.

  Much farther to the side, nearly amidships, hung the shapes of the alien armada pursuing the human fleet. To the human eye, those alien warships were still invisible, but the displays showed exactly where those other ships were, still about a light-hour distant. The relative bearing of the alien armada had not changed for hours, seemingly unmoving off to the side toward the alien star. But the distance to the alien ships steadily decreased as they held to a course that would bring them to intercept the human fleet in roughly eight hours.

  Human fleet, alien fortress, and alien armada formed the points of a triangle with curving sides marking their trajectories through space to reach one another, the length of the sides constantly changing as the human and alien warships converged toward the fortress.

  Geary shifted his gaze to the representation of the human fleet. Quite a few officers had been startled by the formation he had moved the fleet into. Unlike Geary’s usual practice of breaking the fleet into multiple subformations that maneuvered independently, this time he had brought the entire fleet together into a single flattened box shape. The auxiliaries and the assault transports occupied the center of the box, while the battleships, battle cruisers, cruisers, and destroyers were arrayed along the sides and bottom.

  “What exactly are we trying to do here?” Captain Duellos had asked.

  “Give the enemy a clear, concentrated target,” Geary had replied.

  “You usually try to avoid doing that,” Duellos pointed out.

  True enough. But this time he wanted a target the bear-cows couldn’t resist.

  The biggest problem in the plan involved timing. He had to time everything the human fleet did in order to get reactions from the bear-cows when he wanted those reactions. Now Geary waited, trying to relax his mind, letting himself feel the right moment. “All units, turn starboard two zero degrees, up five degrees at time three zero.” That should do it.

  There wasn’t any actual up or down in space, nor could ships, which could be pointed in any direction, agree on where their left and right were, so humans had imposed their own rules on trackless space. Upon arrival in a star system, the fleet’s systems drew a plane along the orbits of the majority of the star’s planets, designating one side “up” and the other “down,” so every ship knew what those directions meant. Every ship also understood that starboard meant turning toward the star, while port meant turning away from it. Crude but simple, the arbitrary system imposed by humanity worked and so had remained unchanged for centuries.

  Desjani sat in her own command seat near his side. “At least with the fleet this concentrated, everybody will get your messages quickly.”

  “That’s one less thing to worry about,” Geary agreed.

  At thirty minutes past the hour, every ship in the human fleet turned simultaneously, the shape of the box not changing but its path through space altering to angle toward the alien armada. Geary watched the smoothly executed maneuver with a feeling of pride. “Damn, they move good.”

  “We always knew how to handle ships,” Desjani reminded him. “You just retaught us the importance of moving in unison.”

  “Hell, Tanya, you can handle a ship better asleep than I ever could at full alert.”

  “You’re only saying that because it’s true.” She tapped out some calculations. “All right, the bear-cow armada is fifty-nine light-minutes and a handful of light-seconds distant. They’ll see that we turned toward them in about an hour. Since we’re closing on them faster now, we should start seeing their reactions in another . . . fifty-six minutes after that.”

  “It shouldn’t take them long to react. Lieutenant Iger and the civilian experts all think from the videos we’ve intercepted that the bear-cows are indeed herd organized. The herd leader is the leader, pure and simple. That leader won’t consult with anyone before deciding what to do.”

  “And the big herd leader on the planet is five light-hours distant, so he or she can’t, uh, horn in on what to do,” Desjani added. “What are you going to do for the next two hours?”

  “Wait,” Geary said.

  “I was going to suggest rest. Have you had anything to eat?” When he shook his head, she pulled out a ration bar in an unusually bright wrapper. “Try this.”

  He took it, frowning as he read the label. “This isn’t a ration bar. It’s a ‘fusion cuisine hand-wrap.’ VIP-issue only.” Geary cocked a questioning look at her. “VIP-issue only? How many of these do we have?”

  “Quite a few,�
� Desjani said, chewing on her own hand-wrap appreciatively. “The crew is going to get a pleasant surprise in their battle rations.”

  “I know I shouldn’t ask, but how did they get aboard Dauntless?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Meaning you didn’t ask.”

  “Mama didn’t raise a fool,” Desjani said. “If you want to ask Master Chief Gioninni how he came across these, you’re welcome, but he’ll probably just tell you they were lying around about to be disposed of, and he rescued them from being wasted. Or something like that.”

  Geary took a bite. The hand-wraps were good. Much, much better than the ration bars the fleet was used to. “Oh, to be a VIP.” He caught her amused look. “No, I’m not. So why did these wraps only show up now?”

  “They’ve been available in the chiefs’ mess since we left Varandal,” Desjani said. “I—”

  “Caught them?”

  “I gained knowledge of the hand-wraps’ availability,” Desjani continued in a perfectly serious tone of voice, “and directed Master Chief Gioninni to immediately enter them into the ship’s food inventory control system.”

  “I see.” Geary took another bite. “Has the master chief reported anything regarding untoward activity among the auxiliaries?”

  Desjani shook her head. “In his words, ‘nothing to bother the admiral about.’ Meaning the usual level of under-the-sensors, unofficial activity, I would guess, but nothing worse than that.” She popped the last bit of her wrap into her mouth. “How about your green-haired lieutenant?”

  “I haven’t heard any reports from Lieutenant Shamrock since we got here,” Geary said.

  “Shamrock?”

  “That’s her nickname. I don’t know why I keep remembering the nickname. Maybe it’s that hair. Lieutenant . . . Jamenson.”

  Desjani grinned. “I’m glad my ancestors didn’t think it would be a good idea to implant green hair in my genetic code.”

  “Me, too.” Geary sobered, thinking again about the mysterious warship construction activity that Lieutenant Jamenson had discovered amid details and minor items hidden in hundreds of routine messages. “All of the engineers have been working around the clock getting damage repaired. I doubt there’s been any free time to look into that more.”

  “Captain Smythe has probably run scams that Master Chief Gioninni has only dreamed about pulling off,” Desjani warned.

  “As long as he keeps my ships working, I can live with that.” Geary took a final bite of his own wrap. “Right?”

  “Well, yeah. Want another one?”

  The crew wasn’t happy, knowing that the fleet had turned toward a faster intercept with the bear-cow armada. Geary could feel on his back the worried looks of the watch-standers on the bridge. “Those bear-cows probably think we intend going head-to-head with them,” he said to Desjani loudly enough for the watch-standers to hear.

  “They’re going to be disappointed,” she replied at the same volume.

  But then she lowered her voice. “If this works.”

  “Captain,” Lieutenant Yuon reported, “we’re receiving readings from the sensors on the latest kinetic projectile to be diverted by that alien defense system on their fortress.”

  “What’s it telling us?” Desjani asked.

  “Um, Captain, it . . .” Yuon shook his head helplessly. “It’s telling us its course was diverted.”

  Desjani turned in her seat to look at Yuon. “That’s all?”

  “Yes, Captain. The sensors didn’t detect anything except the change in vector that caused the rock to miss the fort.”

  “Forward those readings throughout the fleet,” Geary ordered. “I want to see if anyone can spot anything in them.”

  Yuon hesitated. “Sir, Lieutenant Iger said the readings are classified and need to be kept under single-user control.”

  Intelligence didn’t want anyone seeing the new information? That made a strange kind of sense since the capabilities the bear-cows had in certain areas would grant a huge advantage to any humans who could employ them against other humans.

  But getting to that point meant getting this fleet past those bear-cow capabilities, which meant he had to understand as much as he could as quickly as he could. “Inform Lieutenant Iger that I am overriding that order. In this case, the security of the fleet is best served by figuring out whatever we can about this alien technology.”

  Geary settled back again to wait. At the moment, there wasn’t much else he could do.

  “HERE we go,” Desjani said. “It took them less than a minute after they saw the vector we’d steadied on before they changed course to match.”

  Geary nodded, his eyes on the display where the warships of the alien armada had come to port to bring about an even faster meeting with the human fleet. “Hold on. How much are they reducing velocity?”

  “Quite a bit.” Desjani sounded thoughtful, one hand tracing out new data on her display. “Interesting. When we turned toward each other, it increased the combined speed we would meet at.”

  “That’s right. To about point two five light speed if we both maintained our velocities. Too fast for our combat systems to compensate well for relativistic distortion.” The faster a ship went in normal space, subject to the rules of the ancient relativity physics, the more that ship’s image of the universe outside it was distorted. When it came to aiming weapons for millisecond-long engagement envelopes, even a tiny discrepancy between how the ship saw the universe and how that universe actually was would mean a clean miss. Human systems could compensate for that distortion fairly well up to point two light speed, but as velocities increased beyond that the systems increasingly developed too many errors to be accurate. “I expected them to slow at some point. But they’ve come down in speed immediately.”

  “Still braking,” Desjani said. “Those superbattleships take a while to shed velocity. Lieutenant Castries.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Keep an eye on the alien armada’s maneuvering and let me know when their velocity steadies out.” Desjani sat back, frowning now, her eyes intent as if aiming a weapon. “Earlier, they had stopped accelerating before I thought they would.” She tapped controls. “Yeah. Our combined velocities when we came together would have been . . . point one seven light speed.”

  “Point one seven.” Geary rubbed his chin. “I thought they were waiting to accelerate again when they were closer to us, but maybe they didn’t want to encounter us going any faster than that.”

  “Want to bet they’ll brake down enough to meet us at point one seven light?” Desjani asked.

  “If they do . . .” Geary felt himself smiling. “Our combat aiming systems are better than theirs.”

  “Significantly better,” Desjani said. “Why do you suppose they’re changing velocity so early, though? Why not wait?”

  “Good question.” The answer might imperil his whole plan, based as it was on the enemy’s charging his fleet. Geary passed the question on to the civilian experts, hoping they might come up with some insight.

  It took nearly half an hour before Lieutenant Castries called out to Desjani. “They’ve steadied out, Captain.”

  “Thank you. What do the maneuvering systems say our combined velocities will be when we encounter the bear-cows?”

  “If neither of us alters velocity or course again . . . point one seven light speed, Captain.”

  Desjani laughed softly. “Got ’em.”

  “Good call, Tanya.” Geary was running some updates to his plan, taking into account the newly discovered fact that the bear-cow armada would limit its speed as it closed to contact. “That makes our next maneuver in one and a half hours.”

  “Admiral, someone on one of the assault transports wants to speak with you,” the communications watch announced. “You’ve got your comms set to block him, though.”

  He didn’t need distractions, but Geary checked to see who it was. Dr. Setin, one of the civilian experts. “Why is my software blocking S
etin?” he grumbled.

  Desjani heard, turning a glower toward the comm watch. “Have the systems people check the admiral’s screening software and find out why it’s blocking the wrong contacts.”

  Geary entered the override, seeing Dr. Setin’s image pop up immediately, along with that of Dr. Shwartz. “Admiral,” Setin said eagerly, “Dr. Shwartz has an interesting theory regarding the alien beings in this star system. It’s based on a wide variety of observations and analysis—”

  “Doctor,” Geary interrupted, “I’m busy in the preliminary stages of an engagement with those aliens right now. Can you just summarize the theory?”

  Dr. Shwartz spoke quickly. “As humans, we’re used to dealing with creatures which, when threatened or pursuing something, start out with a quick burst of acceleration, trying to either get away or catch their prey by using maximum acceleration and speed for a short period. But an intelligent creature, and here I’m speaking of something as smart as the typical predator or prey, knows once it has escaped immediate danger or failed to catch its prey on the first lunge, that a prolonged chase might ensue. In that prolonged chase, both predator and prey adopt the pace best suited for them to maintain for long periods.”

  Geary thought about that, his eyes going back to his display. “That’s what the bear-cows are doing? Instead of charging at maximum speed, they’re adopting a pace sufficient to get to us using their best efficiency?”

  “I think so, yes, Admiral.”

  “Dr. Shwartz, that doesn’t make sense. They’re not running after us. They’re in ships. The propulsion systems won’t wear out, the fuel won’t exhaust unless their designs are ridiculously short-legged in terms of endurance. We’ll be gone from this star system long before they could run out of means to continue chasing us.”

  “Admiral.” Dr. Shwartz paused, then spoke quietly. “You are assuming that these aliens only intend that pursuit to last as long as we are here.”