The dark ships tried to adjust their own vectors to continue their planned attack, but Geary’s warships were already changing their approach again, aiming to counter the move that Geary knew he would have made if he were commanding the dark ships, the move the artificial intelligences would have been programmed to use in this situation.
He had concentrated his attacks against the dark ship formation containing four battleships, using each of his formations to slice through the array of dark ships in even quicker succession than the dark ships had aimed at the Alliance forces. The dark ships were trying to shift vectors again, trying to bring their other four formations onto paths that would allow them shots at the Alliance formations that were ducking inside the curves of the dark ships’ approaches.
Gamma Four went through first, ten of Geary’s battleships against four of the dark ships. Despite the advantage in numbers, the superior firepower on the dark battleships and the accumulated damage on Geary’s battleships meant the forces were roughly equal. The battleships on both sides threw avalanches of fire at their enemies as the Alliance formation cut edge on through the rectangular dark ship formation.
If that had been it, the engagement would have been inconclusive. But on the heels of Gamma Four came Gamma Three, eleven more Alliance battleships hammering at the dark battleships that had just been flayed by Gamma Four. Overstressed shields collapsed on the dark battleships, hell lances and grapeshot penetrating to flash against the dark ships’ armor.
Reeling from those blows, the dark ships immediately faced the seven battle cruisers of Gamma Two. Battle cruisers didn’t have the same punch as battleships, but they were hitting dark ships that had already been struck by two attacks within seconds. Tulev’s and Duellos’s warships slammed shots into the dark warships, then as they raced onward, Gamma One came through, another six battle cruisers striking enemies reeling from the prior blows.
As the Alliance formations and the dark ship formations separated and tore away in different directions, Geary ordered more course changes even before seeing the results of the attacks. Gamma Four stayed on the same vector, sliding in a vast curve opposite its former path. Gamma Three pushed its main propulsion units, forcing its warships into a tighter curve, and also angling upward. Gamma Two let momentum carry its ships in a wider curve and down. And Gamma One began coming about under full thrust from its battle cruisers’ main propulsion to climb between the other three formations at an angle to them.
Then he looked back, seeing what had happened in those flashes of combat.
Two of the dark battleships were knocked out, one drifting helpless and the other one torn apart. The dark ship formation had also lost two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and a dozen destroyers.
Gamma Four, the first Alliance formation to face the dark battleships, had not come off unscathed. Amazon had taken the brunt of the dark ships’ fire and was rolling slowly through space at a slight angle to her previous vector, unable to maneuver, many of her weapons knocked out. Captain Armus’s Colossus had also taken a lot of hits but was in good enough shape to remain with the formation and continue in the fight. Heavy cruiser Turret was gone, along with light cruisers Chase, Corona, and Foin. Amazingly, only one destroyer, Annellet, had been lost.
An image appeared before Geary, an officer in a survival suit, on the darkened and damaged bridge of a battleship. “Commander Choiseul reporting in. Captain Penthe is dead. Amazon’s power core is damaged and unstable. We are conducting an emergency shutdown. All propulsion is out. Most weapons destroyed. Given dark ship targeting of escape pods in previous engagements, I have refrained from ordering personnel to abandon ship, but if it becomes obvious that Amazon is about to be destroyed, I will order the escape pods launched. To the honor of our ancestors, Choiseul, out.”
The image vanished.
One of the dark ship formations, the one holding ten battle cruisers, had bent through the tightest turn it could manage, clearly aiming to finish off Amazon.
“They’re giving us an opening,” Desjani said quickly.
“I see it.” The two Alliance battleship formations could not alter vectors quickly enough to engage the dark battle cruisers, but Geary’s battle cruisers could. “Gamma Two,” he sent, “intercept the dark battle cruisers targeting Amazon. Gamma One will assist.”
Geary looked over at Desjani. “Captain, this one is yours.”
“Yes, sir.” She didn’t sound as exultant as she usually did when given such an opportunity. Tanya instead radiated grim determination as she gave orders that continued Gamma One’s turn and bent the vector downward again.
Gamma Two had dramatically tightened its turn, also coming up, as Tulev’s Leviathan led the charge to assist Amazon’s survivors.
“Amazon has shut down her power core,” Lieutenant Castries said. The battleship was completely helpless now, a derelict doing a ponderous, uncontrolled tumble through space.
With the dark battle cruisers sweeping down and only minutes from firing, the wreck of the Amazon began volleying out escape pods as her surviving crew sought whatever tenuous safety the pods might offer.
Something in the Marine views distracted Geary for a moment. He moved one hand to close them out, then paused as he saw Marines moving into a large compartment filled with command equipment. The room resembled the primary command center on Ambaru Station at Varandal, but was even larger. Several individuals in generic civilian suits like those of the man and woman Geary had arrested at Ambaru were standing around, hands raised, except for one who was repeatedly and angrily swiping at what must be virtual controls in the air before her. She spun about and began berating the Marines. Even though Geary wasn’t listening to the exchange, he could tell the woman was trying to assert authority over the Marines. More Marines entered, along with Victoria Rione and Colonel Rico. Rione said something to the woman that caused her mouth to snap shut, then Rico ordered some of the Marines to restrain her.
He couldn’t spare the time to find out the details, but the frustration on the part of the suits’ leader and the purposeful way Marine hackers were moving to the facility’s command locations made it clear that the data destruction sought by the agents had not been achieved.
Realizing that it no longer mattered whether Victoria Rione found the critical information needed to restore access to the hypernet because fleeing and leaving the dark ships able to use the gate to attack Unity was not an option, Geary minimized the Marine windows and focused all attention on the clash of battle cruisers that was about to occur.
The dark ships flashed past the wreck of Amazon, pouring fire into the derelict. With Amazon’s power core shut down, the only way to destroy what was left of her was by an overwhelming number of blows that shattered her armor and hull. Ten dark battle cruisers had enough firepower to accomplish that.
Amazon came apart under the merciless barrage, breaking into large and small pieces that spun away from each other.
Even though nearly every dark weapon was aimed at finishing off the battleship, shots from some of the smaller dark ships targeted the escape pods, knocking out or destroying several and certainly killing the men and women inside.
“Damn them.” Geary did not realize he had spoken those words aloud, but he knew that he wasn’t aiming his wrath at the cold minds of the dark ships but at the people who had programmed them and the people who had decided to trust in such weapons.
The dark battle cruisers had only seconds to enjoy their victory. Tulev did not attempt to clip a corner of the dark formation, instead smashing nearly straight up through one side of it, seven human-crewed battle cruisers against five automated dark ships.
Geary barely had time to register explosions before Tanya took Gamma One through the same portion of the dark battle cruiser formation, slashing downward.
Dauntless rocked with hits but kept going.
He tried to focus on his display, tri
ed to take in the results of the two attacks.
Geary heard Desjani breathe a single, despairing word. “No.”
Gamma Two, going through first, had taken the brunt of the enemy fire.
Leviathan was gone, reduced to a stream of wreckage spreading out along her former vector.
“Good-bye, Kostya,” Desjani murmured. “Your war is over.”
Captain Parr’s voice sounded, but his image did not appear before Geary. “Incredible got shot to hell. We’ve lost practically all systems except maneuvering. That’s damaged. We can keep up for now, but that’s all we can do. Fire control and weapons are all off-line, life support barely functional, comms marginal, numerous hull penetrations.”
One battle cruiser destroyed, and one out of the fight.
Clouds of debris marked the fates of two of the dark battle cruisers. Another had taken a lot of hits but still appeared operational.
It took all of Geary’s effort to put aside thoughts of Captain Tulev and set up the next engagement. The battleships on both sides had been out of the last fight, but now Gamma Three and Four came together to sweep past just below and just above one of the dark formations containing six battleships.
In the wake of that engagement, a single dark battleship swerved away from its companions, moving erratically, then abruptly exploded.
But as Gamma Three maneuvered for its next turn, the battleship Revenge lurched off vector, broadcasting massive damage.
“You’re doing what you have to do,” Desjani said, her voice steady, her eyes burning. “We’re taking out one of theirs for every one of ours we lose.”
He wanted to tell her that he didn’t know how much longer he could live with that kind of fighting but realized it did not matter. The odds that he would be living at all for more than a few additional hours appeared to be vanishingly small.
Victoria Rione’s image appeared before him. The battle had carried Dauntless more than three-quarters of a light-hour from the government facility, too far for a comfortable conversation under current conditions. She spoke without pausing for any replies from Geary, looking steadily forward, her voice as firm as her bearing. “Admiral, we have found files that confirm what Admiral Bloch told you. The Armageddon Option is real, and the most powerful so-called Defender Fleet ships do have the codes necessary to weaponize hypernet gates. At the moment we are locked out of all hypernet gate functions and are trying to access any of them that we can. We are still looking for any codes that might disable or divert the dark ships, without success. Every file on this facility is being copied on portable storage devices and also transferred directly to Mistral’s databases. We have discovered a large number of files pertaining to research on how to copy the Syndicate method of gate blocking, but any results were either never listed here or scorched-earth deleted from the systems before we reached this facility.
“We have found no command personnel and no researchers, contractors, or representatives. Records indicate the station had nearly four hundred people here before an emergency evacuation order was given. The remaining security personnel, who are all private contractors, have been disarmed and detained. The Marines have also freed a dozen prisoners from a high-security detention center, along with some medical personnel who stayed behind to look after the prisoners when the rest of the staff unsuccessfully tried to flee.
“We have discovered vast areas in the facility that have been untouched since construction. They contain equipment that is in working condition but decades obsolete. If the government had ever shown up here, they would have been in for some unpleasant surprises.”
Rione took a deep breath. “And we found my husband. The Marines are estimating they will be able to depart the facility in another hour, but Commander Young on Mistral says they will need to be sure they can reach the protection of your ships before they leave the dock.”
He wondered why Rione had provided no details on her husband, why she didn’t look happy at having found him, but had no time to dwell on either issue.
“They haven’t found anything on the facility to help us,” Geary told Desjani. “They did find files that confirmed what Bloch told us.”
“The one time I wanted him to be lying, he wasn’t. Do we go get Mistral now?”
“It will be at least another hour before Mistral can get underway.”
Desjani frowned. “I just thought of something. You should tell Mistral to stay in that dock. She is safe there, safer than if she tries to rejoin us while the dark ships are conducting attack runs on us.”
“Good idea.” He called Commander Young. “Stay in the dock until we call you out. If none of our warships survive the action, we will have hopefully destroyed enough of the dark ships to allow Mistral to make her way home. The information and the people you carry must make it back to the Alliance.”
The dark ship formation with three surviving battle cruisers whipped by Revenge, inflicting a lot more damage but not shattering the massive battleship.
Captain Duellos, now in command of Gamma Two, caught those dark battle cruisers and tore one apart, but at the cost of Implacable taking so much damage that she had also lost maneuvering control and most of her weapons. “Power core unstable! Abandoning ship!” Commander Neeson sent. Escape pods leaped from Implacable as her crew sought safety.
The Dancers were harassing the larger dark battle cruiser formation, making rapid individual passes to pick off cruisers and destroyers. But they had lost five ships and were suffering increasing damage.
Implacable, still racing through space, abruptly exploded as her power core blew. There was no way of telling yet how many of her crew had made it off Implacable or whether Commander Neeson was among them.
Geary directed Desjani to hit the larger of the two dark battle cruiser formations again, the Alliance formation angling past one edge to knock out a couple of destroyers and inflict heavy damage on another dark battle cruiser. But in the process Daring and Victorious both took a lot of hits, and Dauntless suffered lesser but still-significant damage.
The battleships were coming around again, all of the dark ships concentrating on Gamma Four, while Gamma Three tried to swing over and down in time to support the other battleship formation. Geary wondered which Alliance warships would be lost or disabled this time, which men and women would die, as the beleaguered First Fleet fought what would likely be its final, remorseless battle.
A different alert sounded on Geary’s display, accompanied by an urgent pulsing highlighting the last object he had expected to be worried about in this star system or any other. The alien superbattleship captured from the Kicks. “What the hell is happening on Invincible?”
FIFTEEN
LIEUTENANT Castries sounded even more baffled than Geary. “We are picking up indications that power sources are activating in multiple locations aboard Invincible.”
“Multiple locations?” Desjani demanded.
“Yes, Captain, I don’t—”
“Invincible has several power cores,” Geary said. “We weren’t sure why the Kicks designed it that way, but the engineers speculated it was because the ship was so huge that running power from any single location would have been harder than running multiple power sources. But those power cores were shut down! Every one of them was cold. Every piece of Kick equipment on that ship was shut down, deactivated, or disabled.”
“Something is reactivating the power cores,” Desjani said. “I assume that we’re ruling out the Kick ghosts?”
“The Dancers explained that to us. There’s no actual presence. Just an impression of a presence.”
“Then what else—?” Desjani began. “Ancestors save us. Did those maniacs fit Invincible out as a dark ship?”
“She doesn’t have any working propulsion,” Geary replied. “We destroyed her main propulsion drives when we captured her, and we can see that they haven’t been repaired or replaced. W
hat good would it do—”
“Combat systems are activating aboard Invincible,” Lieutenant Yuon reported, sounding dazed. “According to what we’re picking up, it’s the Kick combat systems, not anything retrofitted from human sources. The targeting systems inside the ship and the few weapons that were still operational after we took Invincible are all coming online.”
“The tugs are powering up,” Lieutenant Castries said, disbelieving. “The heavy-hauling Alliance tugs mated to Invincible are activating their systems.”
“How far away is Invincible?” Desjani glared at her display. “Twenty light-minutes. How long does it take to power up one of the fleet’s heavy tugs?”
“Our data says fifteen minutes from standby to emergency movement,” Castries replied. “They were in standby.”
“Then Invincible is probably already underway! What the hell is going on? Those tugs were cold and empty,” Desjani insisted. “No crews aboard. Are the dark ships doing this somehow?”
More alerts sounded, more visual alerts highlighted the same area. “Propulsion on the Alliance tugs fastened to Invincible has lit off at full. Invincible is underway,” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “No life support is active on the tugs.”
“Admiral!” It was General Charban, his image speaking with rapid precision to ensure his words were clear. “We have a message from the Dancers. I won’t read the poetry, just the gist of it. They’re telling us they have ‘reawakened’ the Kick superbattleship and that it is now ‘our distraction.’”
“Distraction?” Geary asked, then suddenly understood. “Diversion. The Dancers remotely reactivated the Kick systems?”
“I assume that’s what they mean,” Charban replied.
“How the hell did they do that?” Desjani asked.
“I don’t know,” Geary replied. “I don’t know why, if they can do that, they didn’t mess with the Kick systems when we were together fighting the Kicks.”
Leviathan Page 30