“Yeah. Ancestors save us. If we’d come straight from Varandal, they would have torn us apart before we could get past them.”
“The only advantage we have is that we have battle cruisers and they don’t,” she said. “But what are the odds that we can use maneuverability to wear them down in any meaningful way? They’re three and a half light-hours from us. We’ve got that much time before they see us, and seven hours before we see their reaction.”
Which left it in his hands. Geary studied his display with a sinking feeling. Even if every one of his ships had been at one hundred percent effectiveness, this would have been a very hard fight.
Aside from the dark ships and Geary’s fleet, though, it was a very empty battlefield. Bhavan had one planet seven light-minutes from a star that was a bit less luminous than ancient Sol, the standard that humans still used. That planet was comfortable enough for humans that it now boasted a significant population in many cities as well as a lot of industry both on the planet and orbiting above it. Five more planets also orbited the star, most rocky but one a gas giant in a slightly erratic orbit that seemed to have swept up at least one other planet in its wanderings. Mining and manufacturing facilities orbited some of those worlds as well, some large enough to qualify as good-sized towns in their own right.
But the many sorts of civil shipping that should have filled space between the planets and around the planets was nowhere to be seen. Freighters, tugs, passenger liners, and other craft that would normally be plodding along their great, curving routes between worlds were all absent.
There were, however, a suspiciously large number of debris fields, by their size fairly recent, and concentrated through the regions that shipping should have occupied.
“It looks like the dark ships have wiped out every spaceship that didn’t manage to jump out of danger,” Desjani said.
“Captain,” Lieutenant Castries reported, “we have indications that every craft capable of entering atmosphere has taken refuge on planetary surfaces. From the chatter we’re picking up, they are terrified of the dark ships going after them, but for some reason the dark ships have refrained from targeting anything that wasn’t in space.”
“They haven’t hit any of the orbiting facilities, either,” Lieutenant Yuon said. “Nothing in a fixed orbit has been destroyed, Captain.”
“That’s weird,” Desjani commented. “It’s almost like . . . maybe that’s it.”
“What?” Geary asked.
She gave him a puzzled look. “It’s as if the dark ships identify this as a friendly star system, with anything in fixed orbit or on a planet safe from attack, but they see any ship in space as an enemy.”
“That at least makes some kind of sense,” Geary said.
“And we’re ships,” Desjani added.
“I already did that math.” He shook his head. “We have one big advantage, but only one.”
“And that is?” Desjani asked.
“We destroyed every one of the dark ships that we fought at Atalia. That means none of them had the opportunity to send any lessons learned to the other dark ships. They will still expect me to fight like Black Jack Geary, and they will fight like me as best they can.”
She gazed at her own display. Knowing her, he could see that she was worried but also determined to fight her hardest. “They’ll learn every time we make a firing run at them. Can we inflict enough damage on sixteen battleships like that quickly enough to make a difference?”
“We’ve got eighteen battleships.” He focused on his display again, trying to think. “What would I go after first if I were commanding the dark ships? Our battleships or our battle cruisers?”
“The battle cruisers. They can run if things get really bad. But we’d have a better chance of catching battleships that were trying to flee the fight.”
“All right.” He lowered his voice, making certain that the privacy field surrounding his and Desjani’s seats was active. “Tanya, our smartest move would be to leave Bhavan. These odds are ugly.”
“Leave without a fight?” She was trying not to sound upset and kept her own voice low, but the emotion came through anyway. “Abandon an Alliance star system to enemy forces? You can’t do that.”
“You can evaluate this situation as well as I can. Even though we’re coming in at them from a different jump point, that meant we had to come out three and a half light-hours from them, which is seventeen hours’ travel time. They’ll have plenty of time to set up attacks on us as we head for them.”
“If they act like they did at Atalia,” Desjani insisted, “they’ll come for us as soon as they see us, so that seventeen hours will be more like eight or nine hours. Which is what you would do, right? But you cannot . . . cannot . . .” Even now, Tanya had enormous difficulty saying the word “retreat” when speaking of Alliance fleet forces.
“This fleet is the only substantial force the Alliance has that can stop the dark ships,” Geary said just as forcefully. “If it is destroyed or takes serious losses, the Alliance will be helpless.”
“If the star systems making up the Alliance hear that this fleet, with you in command, left an Alliance star system to its fate against a force that looks inferior in strength to our own, then there won’t be any Alliance left to worry about!” She glared at him. “You know that’s true! We have to hold the line. You have to hold the line. If Black Jack abandons the Alliance, the Alliance is done!”
He looked back at her, seeing the certainty in her eyes, and knew she was right. “That is one hell of a demand to put on me.”
“I . . . yes, it is.” Desjani shook her head. “But I didn’t make it that way, and I can’t change it. I can just help you handle it.”
“That’s a big thing,” Geary said. “Any ideas?”
“Give them a perfect run at you, then do the stupid thing again.” She must have seen something in him, her expression shading into questioning. “What?”
“I don’t know. Something else is bothering me, but I can’t figure out what it is.” He tried to drop all doubt and prepare for a battle that the other side would not even know was coming for another three hours. “At least our outguessing them on the planned ambush here proves that we can outthink the dark ships on strategy as well as tactics.”
He had arranged his own fleet into three formations again, this time three diamonds arranged vertically. The leading diamond contained all nine battle cruisers, while the other two, currently arranged one slightly behind and below and the other slightly behind and above, each held nine battleships. Ten heavy cruisers accompanied each battleship formation, along with ten light cruisers each, while the remaining twenty-one light cruisers were with the battle cruisers. Thirty destroyers were with each battleship formation, the remaining fifty-two with the battle cruisers.
It gave him a leading formation designed for fast attacks and two trailing formations designed to hit hard.
If Tanya was right, and he thought she was, the dark ships would aim to take out Geary’s battle cruiser formation first. “Our battle cruisers have to be the bait, and the two battleship formations will be the jaws of the trap,” Geary said.
She grinned at him. “Now that’s Black Jack talking.”
“I’ll have to see how the dark ships set up their formations to attack us,” he added. “They won’t hold that single rectangle.”
“Not if they’re programmed to simulate Black Jack. I bet you we’ll see three subformations,” Desjani added.
“I do that a lot?”
“Sure do. But that’s all right. If the dark ships see you doing what they expect you to do, it will feed their confidence.”
That sounded wrong. “They’re not capable of confidence,” Geary said. “How about saying they won’t question the assumptions in their calculations?”
She shook her head more firmly this time. “Look, those may be machines, but t
here are humans behind them. Humans cut the code, humans refined the results, humans ran the tests and decided what outcomes were good enough. As far as I’m concerned, we are fighting those humans. And I want to kick their butts.”
“Fair enough. That feels better than thinking we’re fighting monsters, doesn’t it?”
Desjani grinned. “Sure does. And it helps my confidence. I can beat up software designers without breaking a sweat.”
He gave her a surprised look. “Have you actually done that?”
“No!” She appeared to be genuinely offended by the idea. “I’ve always stood up for the nerds, ever since I was a kid. I was one of them! And look how they’ve repaid me.” Desjani waved at her display and the images of the dark ships on it.
“Creating monsters. Yeah.” But her words had given him an idea for demystifying the dark ships, which felt intimidating for their alienness as well as their strength. He reached for the comm control. “All units in First Fleet, stand down your crews from combat alert for the next five hours. We will be moving to intercept and engage the dark ships. Remember that when we fight those ships, we are fighting the humans who programmed them. Those are the people we have to beat. Geary, out.”
He thought for a moment longer, then touched an internal comm control. “Lieutenant Iger, please inform the alleged agents that we have in custody that we are about to engage in combat with a large force of dark ships. If they want to increase their odds of surviving that battle, they might want to start talking to us.”
“I will pass that on, Admiral,” Iger said, looking discouraged, “but it probably won’t influence them. Those two are hard-core knuckle-draggers. I’m certain they would take it as a point of pride to die not having told us a thing.”
“Even if it led to a disaster for the Alliance,” Geary said. “May the living stars preserve us from those so certain of their own virtue.”
—
TELLING others to rest was one thing. Being able to rest himself was another.
His first stop after leaving the bridge had been his own stateroom, where Geary had carefully composed a message in the hope that Admiral Bloch was present with the dark ships and that Admiral Bloch still had control over them.
“Admiral Bloch, we are both on the side of the Alliance. The ships you command are a threat to the Alliance. We need every warship we can get to deal with threats posed by the remnants of the Syndicate Worlds, especially after what happened at Indras. We also face threats from the enigmas and possibly the creatures we have nicknamed Kicks. I assume you’ve seen the Kick battleship we captured and renamed Invincible. You know the level of danger they pose. We can work together to preserve the Alliance instead of destroying the means for the Alliance to defend itself. I await any communication from you to discuss our options and the best route forward from here. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”
He did not expect Bloch to reply. But maybe he would. Maybe they could make some sort of deal that would halt the dark ships long enough for the government to reestablish control over them.
After sending the message as a broadcast to the dark ships, he tried to get some sleep but could not, his mind irrationally waiting for a reply that could not appear for at least several more hours given that light could only travel a bit more than a billion kilometers an hour, and there were a lot of billions of kilometers between this battle cruiser and the dark ships. Giving up the effort to rest, Geary walked through the passageways of Dauntless, trying to sense the state of the crew’s morale and trying to settle his own nerves. There was something deeply disturbing about fighting a totally automated foe with no living creature in direct command. The upset didn’t make sense on any intellectual basis. Why did it matter what was trying to kill you? But it did. Somewhere inside, Geary had a firm conviction that it should always be who was trying to kill you. As Tulev had said, when it became accurate to instead say what was pulling the trigger, it felt wrong.
Up ahead in the passageway, Geary could see Master Chief Gioninni talking to a junior sailor. He knew what the conversation must be like, since the body language of both participants made it clear that the sailor had messed something up, and the master chief was “explaining” to the sailor why this was a bad thing and must not be repeated.
Both paused in their discussion to face Geary and salute, the sailor rigidly correct and Master Chief Gioninni correct in the manner of someone who didn’t even have to think about how to do it right in order to do it right. “How is everything going, Master Chief?” Geary asked.
“No problems, Admiral,” Gioninni assured him. “I’m just providing a little extra instruction to Seaman William T. Door, here.”
“I hope he appreciates the opportunity,” Geary said, keeping his voice sounding serious. “There has been many a time I wished someone could tell me how to get something done.”
Seaman Door did not, in fact, look as if he appreciated his good fortune.
Gioninni grinned. “If you’re trolling for advice, Admiral . . .”
“The first thing I learned as an ensign was the importance of listening to chief petty officers,” Geary said.
“Then, sir, I know we’re trying to outsmart those dark ships. I would suggest that if you are trying to put a scam over on someone, which is not a matter I have much personal experience with, you understand, then you would want to show them what they expect and what they most want, because that will make your mark confident and eager.”
Geary nodded at Gioninni. “Even if they’re an AI?”
“Sir, did you ever know a computer to question itself? Humans do. Not enough for their best interests, but still they manage at times. But computers? All you can do is kick ’em or reboot ’em or wipe them clean and start over. Those who have total confidence in themselves are the easiest marks by far.”
“Not that you have much personal experience with that kind of thing,” Geary noted.
“Exactly, sir.”
Geary looked back at Seaman Door. “What about confidence in the people who work for you, Master Chief? Is that important, too?”
“Very important, Admiral,” Gioninni agreed. “Even new recruits like this fellow here. He won’t let you down, sir.”
“I know.” Geary met the eyes of Door and smiled with the best confidence he could project, then nodded to both the sailor and Gioninni, and continued on his way.
There wasn’t anything wrong with Gioninni’s advice. In fact, Geary had already employed tactics like that at places like Heradao. The question was whether the dark ships could recognize tactics like that, and whether they could be manipulated into seeing what they wanted to see in the way a person could be.
That led to a string of thoughts that ended with questions that only Lieutenant Iger might be able to answer.
The hatch controlling access to the intelligence compartments offered few clues to the secrets it guarded. The compartment codes on the hatch indicated only that inside it lay Crewed Equipment—Sensor Integration, Analysis, Communications. But the scanners and access controls on the hatch were considerably more robust than those elsewhere on the ship. Geary could have walked right in anyway, but out of courtesy he always called in first, waiting until Lieutenant Iger or one of his subordinates came to escort him inside.
This time it was a fairly junior technician who led Geary into where Iger and his other techs were fussing over a variety of equipment. Lieutenant Iger saluted with a grimace. “No luck so far with the dark ships, Admiral.”
“What are we trying?” Geary asked.
“All of the usual and then some.” Iger indicated the men and women frowning intently as they watched virtual screens, occasionally reaching to enter commands. “We’re trying to analyze the comm patterns and codes being used by the dark ships, but they keep altering in ways we haven’t been able to predict, and their codes keep changing in ways designed to frustrate our equipmen
t.”
“We’ll get it anyway, Lieutenant,” a female chief said, her voice angry and determined. “They can outthink the algorithms, but they can’t outthink me.”
Iger nodded to her. “Stay on it. If anyone can break into their net, you can.” Then he turned back to Geary. “The problem is,” Iger said in a very low voice, “it is obvious the dark ships know everything about our gear and our procedures. They were designed to be as impervious as possible to our intelligence collection and intrusion methods.”
“Lieutenant,” Geary said, “something has occurred to me. From all I have seen and experienced, you, your people, your equipment, are all among the best.”
Iger smiled slightly, looking embarrassed. “Thank you, sir.”
“There’s nothing to thank me for. I’m only saying what I’ve seen. But—” Geary paused, looking around at the intent workers and the screens they were studying. “If we can’t break in, could anyone else?”
Iger hesitated. “With enough resources, anything is possible, sir. Do you mean the Syndics?”
“I mean anyone trying to get access to the dark ships’ comms or controls. If the AIs running the dark ships tried to block any countermanding signals coming in, could they do it? Even if the people trying to break in had the codes they needed?”
This time, Iger took several seconds to reply. “I’ll need to speak to my people, sir.”
“What’s your gut feeling right now?”
“I think the dark ships could block it, sir.” Iger gestured in the direction the dark ships were. “I am guessing that whoever built and programmed them was focused on ensuring that no one who was unauthorized could break in, and gave the dark ships the very best means available to defend themselves against intrusions. But if the AIs can block us, they can block anybody, if they mistakenly categorize an authorized source as an unauthorized source. Or, if some malware got through and recategorized authorized sources as unauthorized, the defenses would then stop any corrective measures from getting in.”
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