The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible

by Campbell, Jack

  “Your primary assignment will be defense of the captured superbattleship. Do you feel that Orion can provide that service?”

  “I have no doubt of it, Admiral.”

  “Then I will continue to list Orion as combat capable. Please let your crew know that they have the most important assignment in the fleet. We must get that superbattleship home in one piece. I am entrusting it to Orion because I know Orion can do the job.”

  Was that a ghost of a smile breaking through the rigid strata of Shen’s usual sourness? “I will ensure that my crew is aware of what you have said, Admiral.”

  As he ended that call, Geary noticed Desjani gazing somberly straight ahead. “What’s the matter?”

  She looked over at him. “Shen and I are old friends. Shipmates. I don’t want to see him die, too. I’ve lost too many shipmates over the years.”

  “Why do you think—?”

  “I know him, Admiral, and you’re beginning to know him. You know he meant what he said. Shen will defend that captured superbattleship to the last even though Orion is coming apart at the seams. And I know why you wanted him and Orion to be on that job despite the material condition of Orion.”

  He watched her, a tight feeling inside him. “Why?”

  She leaned close, inside his privacy field so no one else on the bridge could hear what she said, her eyes on his. “Because,” Desjani said in a low voice, “you’re worried that Captain Jane Geary will take Dreadnaught off on another glorious charge, leaving the superbattleship undefended, and you know that this time Shen won’t follow her, and if he doesn’t follow Dreadnaught with Orion, then Dependable and Conqueror will also stay with that superbattleship. Commander Shen and Orion are your insurance against Jane Geary’s seeking glory again.”

  He wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that he would not risk Shen and Orion that way, but in his heart he knew that he could not deny Desjani’s words.

  TWELVE

  “ALL units, come port zero two zero degrees, down four degrees, and accelerate to point one light speed at time four zero.” The First Fleet of the Alliance, battered but once again ready to face whatever awaited it, headed for the jump point designated by the spider-wolves. Ahead of the human fleet, the six spider-wolf ships that would accompany it easily maintained a distance exactly one light-minute ahead.

  They would be transiting through spider-wolf space, not fighting their way through, so Geary had arranged the fleet in a simple, vast elliptical formation, relatively compact, nonthreatening, and one of the more graceful formations he could have chosen from. The assemblage of human ships still looked crude judged against the spider-wolf formation, as if a barely organized band of barbarians had stumbled into the midst of a formal dance, but it didn’t look as bad in comparison as some of the other choices would have. In the center of the ellipse of human warships, protected alongside the assault transports and the auxiliaries, four battleships mated to the captured superbattleship strained to pull it along with the fleet.

  As they moved across the outer span of the star system, the main spider-wolf formation, still watching the jump point leading to the bear-cow star Pandora, slid past to their right. The beautiful whorls and patterns of the spider-wolf formation changed as the view from the human ships altered, the curves seeming to swirl and melt in upon themselves.

  “Four and a half light-hours to the jump point. Forty-five hours’ travel time if you want to keep to point one light speed,” Desjani announced.

  “It wouldn’t be worth the cost in fuel cells to speed up, then slow down again for the jump,” Geary said. “Not for the small amount of time we’d gain. And getting the captured superbattleship up to speed or slowing it down again is not fast or easy to do.”

  “Is the hypernet gate at the next star?”

  “Our emissaries and our experts aren’t sure,” Geary replied. He watched his display, trying to relax the tension inside him as he waited for problems to pop up. But no propulsion units failed, no maneuvering difficulties appeared, and no pieces came off any of the ships. It doesn’t take all that much to make me happy these days. A century ago, when I was in a peacetime fleet with ships made to last at least several decades, I never could have imagined being thrilled to see none of my ships break when we started a simple movement. “If the hypernet gate isn’t at the next star, we’ll be able to use the additional time in transit and jump space for more repair work.”

  “You’ve gotten very good at rationalizing things,” Desjani said.

  “I don’t have any choice. We need to get to Midway before the enigmas do, but we can only get there so fast.” He had seriously considered leaving the bear-cow superbattleship with a strong escort to follow on behind while he took the rest of the fleet ahead on a dash to Midway. But General Charban had expressed serious doubts that he could get across to the spider-wolves that the human fleet wanted to split and pass through their space in two separate movements. And there was no telling what might await them at any star system they would have to jump through to reach human space after using the spider-wolf hypernet. What if one of those star systems was occupied by the enigmas? What would the enigmas do when they saw a bear-cow warship being towed along by the human fleet? Probably something drastic.

  But nothing had gone wrong yet, and as Geary sat there watching everything happen without a hitch, he realized how incredibly worn-out he was after the last several days of unrelenting work. The effects of the rest day he had ordered hadn’t lasted all that long, probably because he hadn’t really had much chance to rest. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

  He walked down to his stateroom, feeling the mixture of tension, relief, and happiness among the crew members he passed. Happiness to be on the way home again. Relief to be under way. Tension over what they might find along the way home.

  Senior Chief Tarrini smiled as she saluted Geary. “Are there any more questions you need answered, Admiral?”

  Geary almost said no, then paused. “Yes, Senior Chief. I’ve heard the sailors using a word I haven’t heard before.”

  “Well, now, Admiral, you know sailors—”

  “It’s not that kind of word, Senior Chief. At least I don’t think so. Do you know what ‘Bub’ means?”

  “‘Bub’?” Tarrini asked.

  “Yes, and I can tell by the way you asked me that you do know what it means.”

  The senior chief nodded. “It’s short for Big Ugly Bugs, Admiral. Or Butt-Ugly Bugs. It’s what the sailors are starting to call the, uh . . .”

  “The spider-wolves.” Geary let his unhappiness show. “They’re our allies, Senior Chief. They fought alongside us, they took losses fighting alongside us, and they’re helping us get home quickly.”

  “Yes, sir, Admiral,” Tarrini agreed. “But you know sailors. To them, those guys are Bubs. Though I think some Marines might have actually coined the term. You know how Marines are.”

  Geary looked around, exasperated. “I also know what would happen if I ordered the fleet not to use the term ‘Bub.’”

  “Every sailor would be using it as much as possible,” Senior Chief Tarrini said. “And the Marines would be using it even more.”

  “Do you have something against Marines, Senior Chief?”

  “Hell, no, Admiral. I was married to a Marine for a while, before he moved on to take another objective, as they say. I hardly ever think about that bas—I mean, that individual, sir.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Geary looked the senior chief in the eye. “Do me a favor. Spread the word that I have heard the term ‘Bub,’ and I don’t like it. It makes me unhappy to know people are using it.”

  “Certainly, Admiral.” Senior Chief Tarrini saluted him again. “Everyone will know you’d rather they not use that term. If anything can keep it under control, that will. But it won’t go away. You know sailors.”

  “I do, yes, Senior Chief. Thank you.”

  For the rest of his walk, Geary found the strength to look unconcerned and ready
for anything as he returned salutes, then slumped against his hatch once safely inside his stateroom. He dropped down on his bunk without undressing, finally feeling that he could justify some time asleep.

  HIS comm panel buzzed relentlessly.

  Geary finally roused enough to hit the hold control, knowing that if it were a real emergency, he would be getting a different alert from the device. He took enough time to get his uniform in halfway-decent shape before answering.

  Captain Smythe’s beaming face seemed oddly incongruous. “Good afternoon, Admiral. I have good news.”

  “That would be welcome.” Geary sat down, rubbing his face with both hands.

  “Our engineers have extensively analyzed the systems failures that occurred when preparing for the battle here. They have concluded that the spike in failures was caused by the extra stresses on already-weak systems during the power ramp-ups.”

  “I thought we already knew that.”

  “We did.” Smythe’s smile grew smug. “But, Admiral, here’s what we didn’t know. We blew out the weakest system components. That means we had a spike then, but it also means we will now have a period of relatively low failures. Those components most prone to failure have failed. Those components that didn’t fail will probably last a little longer before going bad.”

  Geary ran that through his head once, then one more time to make sure he had understood it. “You’re telling me that the next time we go into battle we shouldn’t have a sudden cascade of failures on numerous ships.”

  “As long as that battle isn’t too far in the future. If it is within the next month or so, you’ll be fine.”

  “That is good news.”

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised, Admiral.”

  Realizing that he was smiling, Geary pushed his luck. “Does this mean we’ll have a chance to get a little ahead on the repair and replacement work?”

  Smythe shook his head. “No, sir. We’re so far behind the curve on that one that we’re in danger of being rear-ended by ourselves. We will continue to get done what we can, but there will be many more system failures before we can get so many internal systems rebuilt on so many ships.”

  “I understand.”

  “It would help,” Smythe added, “if we didn’t have to spend quite so much time repairing battle damage.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to avoid further battle damage, Captain Smythe.” Geary tried to think. There was something else . . . “Has Lieutenant Jamenson discovered anything else regarding that topic she was researching?”

  “Researching? Oh, that. I’m afraid she’s been as busy as the rest of us lately, Admiral. As a matter of fact, she’s on Orion right now as part of the tiger team overseeing the tow linkages to the BKS.”

  “The BKS?” Geary asked, squinting as he tried to recall what such an acronym could stand for.

  “The Big Kick Ship,” Smythe explained.

  I have to come up with an official name for that thing, Geary thought. “Very well, Captain Smythe. Thank you for the good news.”

  Once Smythe’s image had gone, Geary cast a longing look at his bunk. But the last conversation had brought up other matters that he had to check on. He called Admiral Lagemann on the captured bear-cow superbattleship.

  Lagemann answered fairly quickly, grinning at Geary. The other admiral gestured around him. “Greetings from the bridge of my command, Admiral Geary.”

  “Have we confirmed that’s the bridge?”

  “We’re pretty sure it is,” Lagemann said. “The Kicks have some interesting variations in design philosophy from normal human practice.” He ran one hand just above his head. “They also don’t build their overheads as high as we do. My prize crew is suffering an inordinate number of blows to the head whenever we move around. We’re all developing posture problems.”

  “How much space have you got?” Geary asked.

  “This bridge. Some adjoining compartments. The engineers rigged temporary portable life support for these areas. If we go outside those areas, we need to be suited up because the atmosphere in the rest of the ship has become as foul as the air in a port-side bar.” Lagemann indicated some panels propped before him. “They’ve also run some sensor and comm cables and linked up a basic network for us so we can see what’s going on outside.”

  “Does any of the bear-cow stuff still work?”

  “We don’t know.” Lagemann reached toward one of ship’s control consoles but stopped short of touching anything. “The engineers got everything shut down and have strongly advised against trying to power up any of the Kick systems again. They’re worried that some self-destruct routine might have been triggered by the Kicks but hung up or locked up before activating. If we restarted a system, that might clear such a glitch, with very unfortunate consequences.”

  Geary breathed a silent prayer of thanks that someone had thought of that. “How is everything else over there?”

  “We have Marine sleeping gear and Marine rations,” Lagemann said. “The sleeping gear isn’t bad at all.”

  “What about the rations?”

  “They’re better than fleet battle rations, though that doesn’t mean much.”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  Lagemann grinned. “We’re a bit cramped and a bit uncomfortable, but we’ve all seen worse conditions. As for me, I am in command of by far the largest warship to ever be part of the Alliance fleet. I’m good.”

  “Let me know if conditions aboard deteriorate or if you run into anything or discover anything that you think I should know about.”

  “Have you talked to Angela Meloch or Bran Ezeigwe on Mistral?” Lagemann asked.

  “Very briefly. Admiral Meloch and General Ezeigwe have been told that they have a clear channel to call me with anything they think I need to know.”

  “Then you’re in good hands.” Lagemann reached out again, this time gently running his fingers across the edge of a bear-cow control console. “The malcontents on Mistral and Typhoon won’t let go of the past. They want to be who they once were, they want to fulfill the roles they once dreamed of living during the war. I told them before I left, ‘That’s all gone. You can’t rewrite what has happened. But you can find new dreams, and those are all around us.’ Many of them seemed chastised by that, and by events in the past few months. Had you taken us home right after we were liberated, the homecoming would have been very interesting and very lively. But now that things have had time to soak in, now that we’ve all had time to absorb the changes, you have a lot less to worry about from that quarter.” Lagemann smiled with simple joy. “An alien spacecraft, Admiral Geary. Something built by an intelligence different than our own. It’s simply awesome.”

  “It is,” Geary agreed. “With everything that’s going on, I can lose sight of that. When we get that ship home, and the spider-wolf delegation with it, we’re going to learn answers to things we’ve been wondering about ever since our first ancestor gazed up at the stars for the first time.”

  “Will we like those answers? I have to wonder.”

  “Like them or not, we’ll have to deal with them.”

  As they finally approached the jump point nearly two days later, Geary found his gaze straying repeatedly to the other jump point from which they had arrived in this star system. He kept wondering if more bear-cows would appear, a second wave of attackers intent on wiping out the new predators who had appeared on the Kick’s doorstep.

  Then his eyes would go to hundreds of small markers on his display, each with its own vector aimed inward toward the star. Hundreds of dead from this fleet, on their final journey toward the fires of the star, to be consumed there and eventually reborn as another part of the universe. “Light, then dark, then light,” he murmured the words. “The dark is just an interval.”

  Desjani heard, turning a somber gaze his way. “The dark does not last,” she said, the proper response from the ritual. Then her voice changed. “Are we certain that the spider-wolves won’t desecrate any of our dead?
It will be months before they reach the star.”

  “Our emissaries and our experts are all positive that the spider-wolves understand how important we consider the safe journeys of our dead to be,” Geary answered. “Just as insurance, we provided the spider-wolves with full scans and biological information about our species. There’s nothing the spider-wolves could learn from those bodies that we haven’t already given them.”

  “Have the spider-wolves given us all that stuff about them?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Politicians and civilians,” Desjani grumbled disdainfully.

  “Coming up on jump point in five minutes,” Lieutenant Castries said.

  Geary activated his comms. “All units, this is Admiral Geary. We are not expecting hostilities at the next star and must not act in a threatening manner inside space controlled by the spider-wolves. No evasive maneuver will be preplanned for execution upon exit from jump, and no weapons are to be powered up when we leave jump. However, all shields are to be at maximum and all personnel are to be prepared for anything. All units jump as scheduled.”

  The moment of jump came, the stars vanishing and human bodies and minds twisting at the shift from somewhere to somewhere else.

  There would be some time for rest in jump space, but not a great deal. While in jump space, the engineers on the auxiliaries could no longer travel to and perform work on other ships, but they could spend that time manufacturing new spare parts and replacement equipment, both of which were in very high demand, as well as new fuel cells and new missiles to replace those expended. The crews of the other ships would, in most cases, be busy with extra internal maintenance and repairs.

  Geary sat looking at a display showing the outside view. The dull gray of jump space spread on all sides, an infinity of nothing. It was possible to go outside on a ship’s hull while in jump space. It was possible to do work on the exterior of a ship in jump space. But if anything, human or equipment, lost physical contact with the ship for even an instant, it was gone. It was still in jump space, but somewhere else. Just like the ships that made up this fleet, which were all in jump space together, all traveling from one jump point to the same new jump point, but which could not see or interact with each other except for some very simple and basic messages that could be exchanged.