Dreadnaught tlfbtf-1

by Jack Campbell

  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.

  FOUR hours later, Geary stood at attention in his best uniform. Beside him stood Captain Desjani, similarly attired, also at attention. Next to them were two ranks of sailors and Marines from Dauntless’s crew, forming two lines just outside a hatch. From the hatch, giving access to the exterior, a pressurized accommodation tube led to Typhoon. Everyone wore armbands showing a wide bar of gold, another of black, then a final gold bar, symbolizing the night that was only an interval between the light.

  Geary brought his arm up in a salute that he held as the first of twenty-nine sealed body tubes was carried past by more crew members, moving at a somber pace, each step coming with slow deliberation. More followed, carrying the rest of the tubes. Moving down the corridor formed by the two ranks of sailors and Marines, the crew members carried the remains of their comrades through the hatch and toward Typhoon, where they would be kept in compartments designed for that sad burden.

  Normally, cargo was simply floated through the open space between ships. But the fleet didn’t treat its dead that way.

  After the last tube passed by on its way to Typhoon and had vanished from view, Geary finally lowered his arm. Desjani did the same, turning to the honor guard. “Thank you. Dismissed.”

  Everyone left to change back into a regular uniform, to return to the work whose demands never ceased, but sometimes paused when tradition demanded it.

  DAYS of repairing battle damage passed quickly enough. Geary noticed that now when members of the crew spoke of the aliens, they were angry, and that watch-standers viewing alien activity had the aspect of someone aiming weapons at a target they wished killed. Did the enigmas understand how their actions were impacting human feelings about them? Kalixa had been horrible, but the deaths here had been personal ones, men and women who had been friends and comrades, and increasingly the human crews appeared ready to reply to enigma intransigence with firepower rather than futile attempts to communicate.

  “We received another message from the enigma race,” Rione told him. “Do you wish to view it?”

  “Anything new in it?” Geary asked.

  “No. Same avatar, same false bridge, and same dialogue. If we took the words ‘die’ and ‘go’ away from the enigmas, most of their ability to converse would vanish.”

  Charban grimaced. “They’re not acknowledging what we said, and they’re not acknowledging events here. It’s like talking to a wall.”

  Unable to help a grim smile, Geary pointed to his display, where the tracks from the bombardment projectiles fired days ago were finally curving down into the planet’s atmosphere. “We’re about to knock on that wall. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I think it’ll make us all feel better. Maybe, maybe, the enigmas will realize how much damage their actions are doing to them.”

  “If they are anything like humans, that may be a vain hope. Do you think they evacuated the targeted sites?” Rione asked.

  “We have no idea. That blurring is blocking too much detail.”

  “Are you certain this isn’t due to more enigma worms?” Charban asked.

  Desjani shook her head. “If it is, the worms are using a totally different principle. We have people examining every possibility, especially the ones that seem impossible, but our code monkeys haven’t found anything. Our technicians all believe that this is some form of real interference near the things we’re trying to observe.”

  Charban nodded, his eyes downcast. “I’d be surprised if it was worms this time, since the enigmas couldn’t hide their own ships when they attacked us here.” He stood to go.

  “Don’t you want to watch the bombardment hit?” Desjani asked.

  General Charban shook his head, not looking at her. “I’ve already seen too many towns die, Captain Desjani.”

  She closed her eyes as Charban left, then opened them and shook her head at Geary. “We’re back to bombarding towns.”

  “They had plenty of time to evacuate,” Geary said.

  “I know. This time they had plenty of time. What about next time?”

  “I won’t let them drive us to that.”

  “May our ancestors forgive us all if we sink to that level again, no matter what these things do to provoke us,” Desjani replied in a low voice.
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br />   The mood on the bridge was somber rather than celebratory as they watched the time-late images. When the bombardment arrived there, the alien-controlled planet had been five and half light hours from where the Alliance fleet hovered near the jump point. The light from that event had taken five and half hours to arrive, and they were finally seeing what had happened as the kinetic projectiles dove into atmosphere, plummeting from the heavens to tear apart the . . . what? Homes? Businesses? Factories? Did the enigmas have such things as humans understood them?

  Lieutenant Iger reported in, his own tones subdued. “Whatever they use to blur sight of their towns survived the bombardment. We can tell we tore up the targets, but that’s about all.”

  “Fine.” Geary made a final check of the status of repairs. Even badly damaged Daring had patched up the last systems and was ready to go. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  TWELVE

  LAKA Star System was empty, almost literally so. White dwarf stars didn’t tend to have much in the way of planets, and Laka had only a tiny, tormented rock in a looping, close-in orbit that made it likely the minor planet had sailed in from space and been captured by the star sometime within the last million years or so. No alien presence could be detected, but after Pele, no one was sure if that meant there was actually nothing here. “Not a lot to hide among,” Desjani commented.

  Geary took the fleet quickly across the star system to a jump point offering a long jump deeper into alien space. The star they were aiming for this time hadn’t ever officially been given a name by the Syndics, a fact that marked this as the true limits of human expansion in this part of the galaxy. “This is likely to be one of the enigmas’ long-settled star systems,” Geary cautioned the fleet. “They may expect us there. All ships should set weapons to fire upon any threats automatically upon our arrival.” It was a dangerous policy, because even ships’ combat systems could sometimes be rattled by jump exit and mistakenly identify a friendly ship as an enemy, but hopefully the radically different designs of the alien craft would minimize any chances of that.

  He sat in his stateroom after the fleet had entered jump space again, feeling moody at how poorly things had gone. Despite everything that had happened with the aliens, despite everything the aliens had done, Geary realized he had still had a hope that the enigmas would come around and be willing to at least coexist with humans even if they couldn’t bring themselves to be friendly.

  His hatch alert chimed, then Desjani entered. “How do you feel, Admiral?”

  “Lousy. How do you feel, Captain Desjani?”

  “Mad.” She sat down, looking at him. “Not depressed. Just mad. Unlike some others, I never expected the aliens to be reasonable. Maybe that’s because of my experience with humans. What are you going to name the star?”

  The sudden question threw him off. “What?”

  “The star we’re heading for needs a name. We can’t just use its astronomical designation. Normally, there’s probably a whole bureaucracy that decides the name of a star, but if you name one out here, that name will probably stick. So what are you going to name it?”

  Geary shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “You could name it after someone.”

  “Tanya.”

  “What?”

  “I can name it Tanya.”

  “No,” she said, “you can’t. I don’t want everyone looking at a star named Tanya and saying ‘Oh, isn’t it sweet how much he loves her.’ Gag. Name it after someone who deserves to be memorialized that way.”

  “All right,” Geary said. “I’ll name it Cresida.”

  “A star system controlled by aliens who are hostile to humanity? You want to name that after Jaylen?”

  “Fine. I’ll call it Falco.”

  “That man does not deserve to have a star named after him!”

  “Tanya,” Geary said, “why don’t you pick a name?”

  “Because you have the right to choose the name you want,” she replied.

  “So, what name is it that I want?”

  “Something appropriate! Maybe not a person. Something unknown and dangerous.” Desjani snapped her fingers. “Limbo. Call it Limbo.”

  “There’s no star already named Limbo?” Geary asked.

  “Let me make sure.” Desjani’s hand flew over her data unit. “No. There have been some planets, but those were all fictional, in old books. Really old books. Did you know people were writing about interstellar travel long before there was any?”

  “It must have seemed like a pretty amazing thing to look forward to. All right. I think I’ll call the star Limbo.”

  “I think that’s a good choice,” Desjani said. “Why are you smiling if you feel lousy?”

  “Something struck me as funny.” He leaned his head slightly to one side to look at her. “What would become of me without you?”

  “You’d get by.” Desjani stood up. “Four days in jump space before we reach Limbo. If we’re meant to succeed in this, we will. You know that.”

  “Thanks, Tanya.”

  THIS time, when Dauntless dropped out of jump, no weapons fired. Geary’s head cleared enough for him to assure himself that no enemies were nearby, then his eyes went to the display showing the entire star system, where fleet sensors were rapidly evaluating and adding data.

  “Jackpot,” Desjani breathed.

  Limbo held two planets with substantial alien populations, based on the number of towns and cities visible beneath the blurring effects. Many installations orbited those worlds, and scores of freighters crossed between planets. Only a dozen enigma warships orbited the star. If this were a human-occupied star system, they would evaluate it as well-populated and fairly wealthy.

  And there was no hypernet gate.

  Geary kept staring at his display, wondering why that felt so wrong. There were plenty of human star systems without hypernet gates.

  Captain Duellos called in, his expression bemused. “This doesn’t make any sense, Admiral. It’s a good thing, from our perspective, but why would the aliens have hypernet gates in such marginal star systems as Hina and Alihi, but not have one here?”

  “That’s a very good question,” Desjani agreed. “Does it mean there’s another sort of trap lurking somewhere in this star system?”

  Geary braked the fleet’s velocity, holding it near the jump exit, while the fleet’s sensors scoured the star system repeatedly, fixing the locations of other jump points and trying to spot anything that could pose a potential danger. “Nothing, Lieutenant Iger?”

  “No, sir. Just those warships that we can see. If there had been a gate here, and it had collapsed, we should be able to detect the remnants of the tethers. It doesn’t look like there has ever been a gate here.”

  He called his senior fleet officers, asking them for opinions on what the lack of a gate here meant. None of them had good explanations.

  Rione and Charban had no idea, either.

  Admiral Lagemann and his fellow former prisoners couldn’t offer any good suggestions except for reiterating that the aliens liked to spring traps, which did nothing for Geary’s peace of mind.

  Finally, in desperation, he called the civilian experts.

  “Maybe the answer eludes us,” Dr. Shwartz suggested, “because we’re looking at the situation from a human perspective.”

  “What do you mean?” Geary asked.

  “We’re making assumptions. Examine what you’re taking for granted. What are hypernet gates for?”

  “Very-high-speed interstellar transportation.” That was what he had first been told, and that was how humanity used them.

  “What else can they be used for? Think of other potential uses that the aliens might consider primary uses.”

  “I can’t think of anything else the gates are designed to do. As far as other capabilities, we know if they’re collapsed they—” He looked over at Desjani. “They’re weapons. The gates are weapons. Doomsday defenses for any star system.”

  “Defenses?” D
esjani asked, incredulous. “Like, a minefield?”

  “The biggest damn minefield imaginable.” Geary pulled up a star display. “The enigmas were the ones who discovered how to build hypernets. They knew before they built any how dangerous hypernet gates could be. They never built them in their most valuable star systems. They built them on their borders.”

  Charban shook his head. “A willingness to deliberately employ such things as defensive weapons? A great wall of hypernet gates? It’s a scorched-earth defense magnified beyond comprehension.”

  “They’ve proven willing to destroy their damaged ships,” Rione pointed out, “and the crews of those ships. To us, it seems unimaginably ruthless. But to them, it seems such a defense is conceivable.”

  “We got past it,” Geary said. “Maybe because we never intended to attack those star systems. We just wanted to get through them. Maybe that surprised the enigmas.”

  Dr. Shwartz had been listening. “There’s also the possibility that the enigmas themselves shrank from employing such weapons. As different as they may be from us, self-preservation must play a role in their thinking even if it is species based rather than individually focused. There have been cases in human history where weapons were constructed and prepared, but not employed because their destructive power frightened those who had created them. The gates may be intended to deter attacks since their presence would make an assault on that star system impossible. The point may be not to use them.”

  “They wouldn’t work as a deterrent unless potential attackers believed that the enigmas were willing to use them to wipe out their own star systems as well as the attackers,” Charban insisted.

  “I believe it,” Desjani said.

  Geary had his eyes locked on the display. Maybe there was still some hidden trap out there. The decision on whether to leave the area of the jump point and head into the inner star system was up to him. The uncertainties still surrounding what enigma technologies could do, and the enigma fondness for striking by surprise, made the decision far from easy. But in order to learn more about this race, he would have to send ships closer to some of those planets.