The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast (40 page)

Geary looked at his display, where the tracks of the dark warships were converging with each other. “I don’t think the answer matters any longer. With that sort of advantage in maneuvering capability, and us having come this far from any jump points, I don’t think we can avoid them if they come after us. We’ll have to defeat them, then find answers in the wreckage.”

“They’re gathering into three formations,” Lieutenant Yuon said.

Geary watched his display, frowning. It looked like the dark ships were going to arrange themselves in a smaller, but mirror-image, set of box formations in a V like the task force was still using.

“No answers to your message, no communications of any kind, and they’re adopting combat formations,” Desjani said. “They’re definitely going to fight. This doesn’t make any sense at all. What those ships did at Indras could be explained partly, but what they’re doing here is just pure destruction. And now fighting us instead of outrunning us, which they could do? It’s like they’re berserkers.”

“Berserkers?”

“You know, those mythical warriors who just go nuts in battle and fight like maniacs until they’re cut to pieces.”

“Maybe that is what we’re dealing with,” Geary said. “Here they come.”

“They’re accelerating to an intercept with us,” Lieutenant Castries confirmed.

If these had been typical warships, the situation wouldn’t have been too serious since Geary’s forces outnumbered the dark ships by better than two to one in escorts and two to one in battle cruisers. But if the estimates produced by the sensor systems were correct, each of the dark ships had the same punch as two of Geary’s ships, and they had a significant advantage in their ability to maneuver as well. “We’ll have to hit each of his subformations hard in turn.”

He decided to make one last check, to see if any other paths might exist. “Lieutenant Iger? Have you heard anything from the dark ships? Anything in any form?”

Iger had recovered his equilibrium and now looked as bleak as Geary felt. “We’ve seen no comms from the dark ships, Admiral. Atalia has sent them messages, attempting to surrender, but they haven’t responded at all.”

There simply wasn’t any alternative to fighting. Geary started planning out the moves in his head. The dark ships were also accelerating to point two light speed as they charged toward the Alliance task force. If the two groups met at a combined velocity of point four light speed the odds of anyone getting a hit were very near zero. They would be tearing past each other at one hundred twenty thousand kilometers a second, which didn’t offer much of a window for hitting a target even if views of the universe weren’t pretty significantly distorted at that velocity.

With the dark ships coming toward an intercept so quickly, the curve of their vector sweeping toward a meeting with the long arc formed by the path of the Alliance task force, the time to meeting had shrunk dramatically. “Two hours to contact on current vectors,” Lieutenant Castries reported.

Geary blinked his eyes, ran one hand through his hair, and straightened in his seat before touching his comm controls. “All units in Task Force Dancer, this is Admiral Geary. We have encountered ships of unknown type and allegiance, which have attacked and destroyed Alliance military and civilian shipping. They are now targeting us. We will destroy them, then determine their origin and motives. All ships are to come to full combat readiness in one hour. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”

There weren’t any cheers this time. The crew’s emotions matched Geary’s, a somber recognition of the need to deal with this mysterious and murderous threat.

The only good part about the next hour was that the concentration of the dark ships on Geary’s force had halted the attacks against other targets in Atalia Star System. A stern resolve had settled among the crew of
Dauntless
and the other Alliance warships as word spread about what the dark ships had done and about the weapons and maneuvering capabilities they could bring to bear.

He waited until time to contact was forty-five minutes out, only nine light-minutes from the enemy, before ordering the braking maneuver, bringing the warships around to reduce their velocity to point one light speed.

“The enemy is also braking velocity,” Lieutenant Castries announced.

Desjani had a puzzled look. “They started braking seven minutes ago, at almost the same time as you did, before they could have seen you had started doing so.”

“Coincidence,” Geary said. He was eyeing the enemy formations. Tanya had warned him that he tended to favor attacks up and to the right. Instead, he would aim for the dark ship subformation that was on the right and behind the leading dark ship formation. It contained two dark ship battle cruisers along with one of their heavy cruisers and four destroyers.
If I can hit them with most of my firepower while avoiding the rest of the dark ship subformations, I can knock out a third of their combat capability.

They were one and a half light-minutes from the enemy, both sides having reduced their velocity to point one light so that the time to contact was still fifteen minutes away, when Geary made some minor adjustments to his formations, readying them for the sudden twist to the right and down that would avoid two-thirds of the dark ships and hit the remaining third as hard as possible.

Tanya was usually completely calm during moments like this, absorbed in the battle. But this time she was frowning at her display as if she were seeing something that bothered her.

“What’s the matter?” Geary asked.

“I don’t know. Something.”

“Let me know the instant you figure out what it is.” He focused back on the enemy force. The dark ships were coming onward without any alterations in vector, aiming straight for the center of the Alliance subformation at the tip of the task force’s V. Aiming for the subformation centered on
Dauntless
.

It was almost time to make his move. Almost time to make that small, last-moment adjustment in vectors. Geary’s hand hovered over his comm controls, ready to send the command.

“Admiral.” Desjani spoke abruptly but with utter certainty. “Break off the attack. Now. Take every ship wide of a firing run. Any direction.”

He had literally only a second or two in which to decide whether to do as she said and lose what seemed to be a perfectly set up firing run, or to ignore Tanya’s advice and stick with his plan.

Only a second or two.

Damn!

GEARY’S
hand came down on his comm control. “All units in Task Force Dancer, immediate execute, up one five degrees!”

Dauntless
jolted upward, along all of the other Alliance warships. Geary fought down a wave of disappointment over the lost opportunity, matched with anger at Tanya for spoiling the attack run. He was only partially aware of the moment in which the dark ship formations rocketed past beneath them, some of the dark ships tossing out shots that scored a few hits on the lowermost ships in Geary’s formations.

Wait a minute.
“How could any of them have been in range when we made that big a vector change? Even with their advantage in maneuverability, they shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“Because they did last-minute maneuvers to bracket one of our formations with all of theirs,” Desjani said, pointing viciously at her display. “If you’d executed your firing run as planned Badaya’s subformation would have been torn apart. Replay the last maneuvers on the display if you don’t believe me.”

Geary began to turn his ships farther up, planning on bending them all the way around to reengage the enemy. “How did you know that they’d do that?”

“Because it’s what you would have done. Have you ever run sims based on your previous engagements?”

“You mean replayed the battles we’ve fought? No.” Once of each had been more than enough.

“I have,” Desjani declared. “Because I wanted to learn more about your way of fighting. I’ve played the enemy against you in those sims, and as those dark ships came at us, I suddenly realized that it felt exactly like one of those sims replaying
your
moves. That’s what was bothering me.”

“They’re copying me?”

“This isn’t just copying! This is
you
. They’re using automated maneuvering tactics based on what you’ve done, based on how you fight. They’ve got a simulated Black Jack calling their shots.”

Things had just gotten a lot worse. “How do I outsmart myself? Why didn’t we understand this hours ago, so I could review those battles and see what lessons that sim would be using?”

She gave him an annoyed look. “Well, pardon me for not figuring it out sooner!”

“That’s not what I—” He saw his formations reaching just past the vertical as they turned to reengage the dark ships, and he hit his comm controls. “All units in Task Force Dancer, immediate execute, turn up one two zero degrees.” That would curve his task force away from an intercept, throwing off the dark ships, whose own courses would be based on the assumption that he would reengage as quickly as possible. Because that was what Black Jack did.

But the dark ships were reacting fast, twisting into tighter turns than Geary’s ships could achieve and accelerating at faster rates than his ships could match. “All units, immediate execute, come starboard eight zero degrees.”

All three Alliance subformations swung over at almost a right angle from their previous vector, heading almost straight for the distant star once again.

“I need time to think. Maybe if I split off the other two formations, have them operate independently—” Which was just what something programmed to think like Black Jack would want, he realized, because while Tulev was a good commander, and Badaya wasn’t bad, either one could more easily be caught and overwhelmed if Geary was trying to deal with three formations moving on totally different vectors against an opponent as good as he was.

How could he break contact with a force that was more maneuverable and could accelerate faster?

“We’ve got to try another firing run,” Geary said. “I need to disrupt them enough to gain time to think about this, and only a firing run offers the chance to do that.”

Desjani hesitated, then nodded, a slight sign of worry creasing her brow.

He brought his ships all the way down and around, swinging the course change as tight as he could to try to catch the back end of the three dark ship formations as their V passed overhead.

But the dark ships reacted too quickly, tightening their own turns even more and changing vectors for another head-on encounter.

Geary tried to decide which part of the enemy formation to aim for, which subformation was most vulnerable. The geometry of the situation left him unable to turn tightly enough to go high, and he didn’t want to aim right and low again, so he aimed for the left side.

Did he actually see, in the last moments when it could make a difference, the beginnings of a countermove by the dark ships? A countermove that would catch Badaya’s subformation in a deadly vise? Or did he just sense it?

“All units, immediate execute, down two zero degrees!”

The Alliance warships lurched through the sudden change, sliding dangerously close to the dark ships, which were indeed diving straight toward where Badaya’s ships would have been.

They missed each other by far too close a margin, out of range of most weapons but close enough for the dark ships to volley out missiles.

“All units pivot and engage missiles,” Geary ordered.

Every battle cruiser, heavy and light cruiser, and destroyer swung completely around, their heaviest armament aimed toward the oncoming wave of missiles while the ships themselves continued moving backwards at the same rate they had been going. Hell lances lashed out, destroying most of the missiles short of their targets, but some ships had to fire point-defense bursts of grapeshot to hit missiles on final approach.

And the dark ships were coming around again.

He could feel what was happening. He was reacting. The dark ships had the initiative and weren’t letting go. This was a path leading to disaster.

Geary looked toward Desjani, who was gazing fixedly at her display, not saying anything, not offering advice as she usually did.
Because she knows this isn’t the usual situation. She doesn’t know what advice to give when I’m fighting myself. And I miss having her suggestions because sometimes they have saved my butt and—

Of course.
“Tanya, they may have a sim of how I fight battles, but they don’t have you.”

“That’s very flattering,” she said in a tight voice. “But I don’t see the relevance in terms of winning this fight. I wasn’t single-handedly winning the war before you showed up, remember?”

“My point is, we work as a team,” Geary explained with a patience he didn’t really feel. “You see things I don’t, I see things you don’t. Whatever Black-Jack sim the dark ships are using won’t have that. And I feel certain they loaded that sim with century-old tactical procedures that people had increasingly ignored during the war, but I have used because they’re what I knew. I noticed the attack on the courier ship was carried out exactly how those procedures mandated that specific type of operation. That means the sim is programmed to counter
my
tactics.”

Her eyes lit up with a fierce enthusiasm. “The more I influence your tactics, the more I suggest the ways we did things that don’t match your tactical training, the less that sim will be able to predict them.”

“Exactly. You said you were studying those sims of my past battles to help you learn how to fight more like me. Now we need you to help me fight less like me. But still good enough to kick the butts of the dark ships.”

She grinned. “Then I can tell you exactly what to do on the next firing pass.”

“What?” he demanded, watching the dark ships steady out below and behind the Alliance task force, a couple of light-minutes distant on a stern chase.

“Do the exact same thing that you planned to do last time. Hitting the left and back subformation, right? Do exactly that again.”

“What?” Geary repeated, baffled.

“You never repeat a maneuver right after you’ve used it, Admiral.
Never.
Those ships will expect you to aim for another attack point. They will act assuming that you are aiming for another attack point because their sim will tell them you never hit the same spot twice in a row in the same way.”

He stared at her. “I love you.”

“Excuse me, Admiral?” Desjani asked, though she also smiled.

“Sorry.” If the rest of the bridge crew had heard his words, they were doing a very good job of pretending not to have.

He brought his task force on down, all three formations completing a vertical loop that found them facing back toward the dark ships. If there had really been an up or down, his ships would probably be upside down compared to their previous alignment, but that didn’t matter in space. What mattered was that the dark ships had adjusted their formation as well, coming down a bit to head for another direct intercept.

“That’s exactly how I would have lined them up if I were commanding those dark ships,” Geary said. “You’re right. You are absolutely right.”

“Have we reached the point where you can just start assuming that?” she asked.

“We already have. I pulled us out of the first attack run, didn’t I?”

The two V formations weren’t aligned in the same plane. Geary’s three subformations were tilted up on one side relative to the subformations of the dark ships. Which was all to the good this time around. “Formation Delta One, come port zero two degrees, down zero one degrees at time four one. Formation Delta Two, come port zero six degrees, down zero three degrees at time four zero point five. Formation Delta Three, come port zero one degrees at time four two. Engage targets in the farthest port enemy subformation.”

This is all wrong.
Every bit of training and experience he had told him not to do this, not to aim to hit that left side of the dark ship formation again in an approach as nearly identical as possible to the last one.
But if I feel that way, then it’s actually right this time.

In the last moments before contact, beginning with Badaya’s formation on the upper left of the task force, the three subformations altered vectors, swinging slightly to concentrate on where Geary expected the farthest-left dark ship formation to be as the dark ships also moved to intercept where they thought Geary would go.

The instant of firing came and went, automated fire-control systems hurling out weapons during the vanishingly small moment of time when the opposing ships were within range of each other.

Geary felt
Dauntless
shuddering from hits and felt a tightness in his gut, wondering if she had been badly damaged.

Then the displays updated as the sensors on the Alliance warships peered backwards to evaluate the results of the encounter.

It hadn’t been perfect. Not quite. But the dark ships had swung up and to the right, expecting him to target there. The swift, precisely executed maneuver had resulted in most of the dark ships being out of position, but with the Alliance warships nearly surrounding the left-hand dark ship subformation, subjecting it to the concentrated fire of all twelve battle cruisers, eight heavy cruisers, thirteen light cruisers, and twenty-five destroyers.

One of the dark ship battle cruisers was completely gone, a cloud of debris marking where it had been. The other had broken into several pieces, which were slowly flying apart, shedding smaller fragments as they went. The dark ship heavy cruiser had been crippled, spinning off down and to one side with no maneuver controls and almost all weapons out of commission, while of the four dark ship destroyers in that subformation, three had been blown apart, and the fourth was nearly broken into two large pieces which were barely holding together.

Geary took that in, then looked for the damage to his own ships. The enemy, in the seconds before contact in which he could spot what had happened and prioritize targets, had clearly concentrated his fire on the central subformation of Geary’s task force. Despite being badly outnumbered, the extra weapons on the dark ships had allowed them to score some blows.
Daring
had taken several hits and lost a hell-lance battery as well as two missile launchers.
Victorious
had also been hit and lost half her missile launchers, but both battle cruisers had not suffered any maneuvering or propulsion damage.
Adroit
, though, was sliding off to port without any maneuvering control at all.

He could hear the damage reports coming in to Tanya Desjani. Hits amidships. Two hell-lance batteries out of commission. Minor damage to maneuvering systems. Through luck or her position in the subformation,
Dauntless
had come off relatively lightly.

The heavy cruisers
Bartizan
and
Haidate
had taken hits on their bows but not serious damage. Light cruisers
Absetzen
and
Toledo
were hurt but still able to keep up, but their sister ship
Lancer
had been totally knocked out and was tumbling away.

Oddly, only two Alliance destroyers had been hit,
Kururi
and
Sabar
. The dark ships had managed a better than usual concentration of fire against major combatants.

Geary was already bringing all three formations around again, curving toward the star and slightly upward to meet the dark ships as they came around also toward the star. He was tempted to break two of the Alliance subformations loose, to maneuver each of the three separately to confuse an enemy already reeling from unexpected losses, but realized that was what Black Jack would do. “What do you think?” he asked Tanya.

“Third time’s a charm.”

“Do it again? But there isn’t any more left-hand subformation.”

“There’s still a subformation to the left of the other one!” she insisted.

Doing a third attack in the exact same manner was, his instincts told him, a recipe for disaster. “It’s really hard to do this,” he muttered. “I feel like I’m going to destroy half my ships.”

The V of the Alliance task-force formations was now almost tilted on edge relative to the plane of the solar system, coming back toward the dark ships, which had closed down smoothly into a single, rectangular box formation with one long side facing forward. If neither opponent adjusted vectors, the three Alliance subformations in their V would slice through the dark ship rectangle at a right angle, like an arrowhead tearing through a bar of butter.