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Authors: Jack Campbell

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BOOK: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught

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The remaining alien warships, only twenty-five still in the fight, had begun firing on the auxiliaries when the Alliance battleships finally trudged even with the lightly armed support ships. The cruisers and destroyers to either side and in front of the auxiliaries were now pivoting as well, the heavy cruisers unleashing some of their own specters.

It was the battleships that made the difference, though, wiping out the nearest enigma ships, then decimating the second rank.

Only six alien warships managed to break away, twisting around in maneuvers no human warship could match, to tear away at an astounding rate.

Even though the battle was over, explosions still rippled through space as the wrecked alien warships near the Alliance forces self-destructed.

“All units, resume formation, brake velocity to point zero two light speed.” He needed to see how badly his fleet had been hurt before proceeding farther into this star system.

“There’s another hypernet gate here,” Desjani snapped as she fielded damage reports. “Bastards.”

He checked the damage reports flowing into the fleet net from
Dauntless
and the other three battle cruisers, wincing at the results.
Daring
had been hit the worst, her bow badly shot up, numerous systems out, and close to a hundred crew members dead or wounded.
Victorious
had sixty casualties, and had lost half her hell lances. Fiftythree of
Intemperate
’s crew were dead or injured, and she had taken bad damage to her bow’s port quarter.

And
Dauntless
. “Twenty-eight dead,” Desjani said, her voice betraying no feeling, no emotion, at all. “Forty-one wounded, six critically. I have four working hell-lance batteries.” She took another report. “Correction. Three and a half working hell-lance batteries.”

Geary felt a numbness inside himself as he hit his comm controls again. Such a short period of time, better numbered in seconds than in minutes, and so many lives lost. “Captain Smythe, I want auxiliary repair support mated to
Dauntless
,
Daring
,
Victorious
, and
Intemperate
as fast as you can get them there.
Daring
,
Victorious
, and
Intemperate
, advise as soon as possible if you need medical assistance. General Carabali, ensure the medical teams on
Mistral
,
Haboob
,
Tsunami
, and
Typhoon
are prepared for immediate response to requests for support.”

He turned to look at Desjani, whose stony expression matched the flatness of her voice. “Does
Dauntless
require medical assistance?”

She made another call to sick bay, then nodded. “We can use support, Admiral, especially for the critical injuries.”

“
Typhoon
, close on
Dauntless
to provide medical support as soon as possible.” Geary noticed that Desjani was still waiting for him. “Attend to your ship, Captain. I’ll look to the rest of the fleet.”

“Thank you, Admiral.”

THANKS
more than anything to the limited numbers of alien attackers, the damage to the battle cruisers was by far the worst the Alliance fleet had sustained. A few minor hits on the auxiliaries could be repaired without difficulty, and the battleships had taken only superficial damage.

They had already seen several more alien warships pop in via the hypernet gate at Alihi as the Alliance fleet hastily repaired damage and its sensors studied the planets there. The star system had two planets deemed marginally habitable by the Syndics, one just over six light minutes from its star and the other about ten light minutes distant. Neither would be comfortable for humans, but they weren’t hell-holes either. Farther out, a dense asteroid belt orbited at twenty light minutes from the star, and beyond that, four gas giants.

The enigmas had settled the planet six light minutes out, and from the sensor readings may have been undertaking the enormously difficult task of modifying its environment to be more hospitable. “Humans don’t do that,” one of the engineers explained. “It’s not that we couldn’t. We worked out the basic techniques a long time ago on that planet near Old Earth. What’s it called? Mars. But we did that before jump technology made interstellar travel pretty easy. Since then, it’s just far easier and cheaper to find a nicer planet in another star system than it is to go to the work of fixing up a marginal or hostile one.”

“Any idea why the aliens would be doing it here, then?”

The engineer pondered that. “I can think of two reasons. One would be that the planetary modifications are much simpler and less expensive for them. The other is maybe they can’t find enough better planets, like what happened when the Syndics ran into them and that region got blocked to further expansion by both sides.”

“No signs of human presence,” Lieutenant Iger reported, “but just like at Hina, our ability to analyze the inhabited world is severely constrained by their countermeasures.”

Dr. Setin didn’t try to hide his frustration. “We can only guess at the population here, but based purely on the number of towns, we think it is higher than at Hina. Can’t we get closer to that planet? We’ve finally found another intelligent species, and we can’t learn anything about them!”

There didn’t seem to be much reason to stay at Alihi.

“
THE
hypernet gate here is only two light hours from this jump point,” Geary said, his voice heavy. The images of the fleet’s commanding officers focused on the star display over the conference table. “There’s no way to reach another jump point without risking certain destruction. But, this jump point accesses both Hina and another star, angling deeper into enigma territory. The Syndics named it Laka, but two survey missions they sent there over a century ago both vanished without a trace. We can assume Laka is also occupied by the enigmas. As soon as our four damaged battle cruisers are ready, we’ll jump for Laka.”

“I take it our formation will be modified next time,” Armus said.

“Yes. We’ll be ready for anything coming from any angle when we exit jump.”

“Why not stay here,” Captain Vitali of
Daring
suggested in a hard voice, “and bombard the hell out of everything until there’s nothing but ruins, then go out and explore what’s left?”

General Charban, looking uncomfortable, responded. “Our mission is to try to establish peaceful relations—”

“Those things have attacked us every time we’ve encountered them! They don’t talk to us, they
won’t
talk to us. They just want to kill us. Fine! Let’s give it back to them!”

A low murmur of approval sounded around the table.

Duellos sighed loudly enough to be heard by everyone. “The problem we face is that damnable hypernet gate. Even if we destroyed everything, that wouldn’t guarantee that there wasn’t some dead-man mechanism on the gate designed to collapse it and catch this fleet in the resulting blast.”

“Why not hit the gate, too?” Vitali demanded.

Commander Neeson shook his head. “If we start taking out gate tethers, we lose control over the collapse process. Once it started going, the aliens could easily have it set to go into a catastrophic collapse sequence.”

“Enough rocks fired at the right tethers—” Vitali continued stubbornly.

“There are defenses around the gate. All they have to do is divert one rock slightly to throw off any collapse sequence we planned on.”

“Perhaps,” Charban suggested, “if we launched a limited bombardment at a few places, a demonstration of what we
could
do—”

“That didn’t work with the Syndics,” Badaya interrupted. “I never thought I’d be saying this, but the Syndics seem to be downright reasonable compared to these enigmas. Anything that didn’t convince the Syndics won’t convince the aliens.”

“I have to agree,” Duellos said.

“That doesn’t prevent us from striking back,” Desjani said. “Bombard some of those towns. They’ve given us more than adequate grounds to retaliate. We can show them that when they attack us, they can’t just run away and avoid any more hurt.”

Charban hesitated. “They’d see a bombardment launched from here early enough to easily allow evacuation of their populace. It will demonstrate our capabilities in a way impossible for them to ignore but shouldn’t create any motives for vengeance based on civilian deaths.”

Dr. Shwartz and Dr. Setin had been invited to listen in, and now Shwartz spoke reluctantly. “We don’t even know whether they understand the distinction between military and civilian. The enigmas may be as blind to such a concept as the average human male is to the difference between taupe and beige.”

“According to the Syndic records,” Duellos said, “they lost quite a few ships in this region before even realizing that the enigmas existed. Many of those ships were lightly armed or unarmed. If the aliens do recognize the distinction between military and civilian, they seem more than capable of disregarding it.”

Everyone looked at Geary, who bent his head in thought for a moment before nodding. “Yes. We’ll send them another message saying that we want peaceful coexistence, but that if they persist in seeking war, they’ll have to deal with war. I don’t see any other option.”

The moment of silence that followed was broken by the captain of
Victorious
. “Do we bury our dead here? Send them toward this star?”

“No,” Vitali insisted immediately.

Geary nodded once more. “I agree with Captain Vitali. There’s too great a chance that the journey of our honored dead to the star would be halted by the aliens. There are compartments on the assault transports for storage of casualties. We’ll transfer our dead there and hold them until we reach a star system where their burials can be conducted safely. Captain Smythe, how long until all four damaged battle cruisers are back in battle-ready condition?”

Smythe scratched his neck meditatively. “None of them will be in mint condition, but give me three more days, and all of their weapons will be working again, holes in their hulls patched, and shields back up to strength.”

Desjani was running some calculations. “A bombardment launched from here will take sixty-one hours to reach the planet where the enigma towns are.”

“All right,” Geary said. “We’ll launch the bombardment within the hour, along with our message that this is just a taste of what pissed-off humanity can do. That will give the aliens plenty of time to respond with something other than more attacks, if they so choose, and give us time to see the bombardment hit and evaluate the results before repairs are far enough along, and we jump for Laka.”

Most of the officers left quickly when the conference ended, but Smythe lingered long enough to shake his head at Desjani. “I go to all that trouble to get your ship’s systems upgraded, and you go and get a good lot of the equipment blown apart before the work’s completely done.”

“I’m just trying to keep your engineers gainfully employed,” Desjani replied, managing the first trace of a smile she had shown since losing her crew members.

“I appreciate your efforts, but I wanted the admiral to know that one of the hell-lance batteries on
Victorious
wasn’t knocked out by enemy action. Not directly, anyway. One of the power junctions feeding it failed.”

“Age?” Geary asked.

“Age and stress,” Smythe confirmed. “I can’t teach our equipment meditation, so I’ll keep working at making it younger.”

Charban sat staring down at the table after Smythe had vanished. “If they’d only talk to us. This is senseless. War always seems senseless, but we don’t even know why they’re hostile. Don’t think I don’t appreciate exactly how your Captain Vitali feels. I lost a lot of troops in my time.”

He stood up and walked out, something in his movements and his bearing making Charban seem older.

Desjani glanced at Rione, who was still seated, and stood up herself. “I’ll get a bombardment plan set up. Admiral.”

“Thanks. Target about half the towns on the planet.”

“Half?” She smiled again, this time in a feral way. “I thought you’d limit me to a quarter.”

After Desjani left, Geary sat waiting for Rione to say something. Finally, she looked directly at him. “I realize that the words ‘it could have been worse’ are cold comfort at such times,” Rione said. “But they are also true. You could have been mourning the loss of several ships, and thousands of dead.”

“I know.” Geary leaned back, trying to dull the pain inside as he thought of their losses. “If we hadn’t reacted as quickly as we did, we could easily have had most of the auxiliaries crippled or destroyed, which could have left this fleet in a very bad position. Was that the idea, Madam Emissary?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do. I wish I had some idea of why you would have agreed to play a role in it.”

“You know that I have always been willing to sacrifice myself for the right reasons.” On that, she also stood and left.

BOOK: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught

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