The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught

by Jack Campbell

  “One minute to jump,” the maneuvering watch said.

  “It takes the gates more than a minute to collapse,” Desjani said, “and we haven’t seen it start. We’re clear.”

  “Yes,” Geary agreed. “We are.” He tapped his controls. “All units, the aliens may be using their faster-than-light comm capability to muster forces at Alihi. Be ready for a fight when we exit jump.”

  Forty seconds later, the fleet jumped for Alihi.

  Desjani sighed and stood up as the gray of jump space replaced the alien threat at Hina. “I’m tired, and for some reason I’m hungry. I’m going to get something to eat.” She leaned closer to Geary. “Next time you come up with something to distract everyone.”

  “I won’t be able to equal you.”

  “No, but you can do your best, Admiral.” With that parting shot, Desjani left the bridge.

  JUMP space always tended to make humans uncomfortable. Humans didn’t belong in jump space. Maybe nothing really belonged there. Maybe the strange lights that came and went were reflections of something happening somewhere else. At some level beneath conscious thought, humans could never be at home in jump space, growing more irritable with every consecutive day spent there.

  But whatever was bothering Geary during this jump to Alihi felt different from the usual jump jitters. Something that Desjani had said kept coming back, like a shadow half-glimpsed repeatedly. If you’ve got a knife . . . Why did the idea of the aliens wielding knives trouble him so?

  Normal communications were impossible in jump, but between the time he had fought his battle at Grendel a century ago and when he had been found still alive in survival sleep, humanity had figured out how to send brief, simple messages between ships. On the fourth day of the jump, barely eight hours from exit at Alihi, a message came from Mistral for Geary.

  Geary read it over again slowly, despite its necessary brevity. Regarding aliens—Watch your back. Lagemann.

  He had asked Desjani to come down to his stateroom to look at it and talk about it, and now she frowned in puzzlement. “We know the aliens can’t be trusted. Is that all he’s saying?”

  “I don’t think so. He and his fellows are supposed to be trying to guess how the aliens will fight.”

  “This sounds more like a warning against a stab in the back.”

  “What?” Geary whirled to stare at her.

  She switched the puzzlement to his reaction. “I said it sounds more like a warning against them trying to stab us in the back.”

  “A knife. In the back.”

  “I wasn’t speaking literally.”

  Geary made a fist and rapped it against the side of his head. “Damn! That’s what it means! That’s what’s been bothering me!” He called up a display showing the Alihi star system, or at least what that star system had looked like when the Syndics had outposts there. “They strike from hiding. From ambush. If your worms aren’t working anymore to conceal you from enemy sensors, where can you hide in a star system?”

  Desjani shrugged. “Behind the star. Behind a planet or moon.”

  “Behind a jump exit?”

  “No!” She stabbed a finger at the display. “You’re talking about an ambush force positioned behind a jump exit to catch an arriving force in the rear? It doesn’t work. It can’t work. The physics are against you.”

  “Why?” Geary asked.

  “Because, one, you don’t know if or when someone is arriving at a jump exit. It’s hard to maintain a position close to one and even harder right behind one. You’re going to do that for days, weeks, months? Two, whoever shows up is heading out of the exit, away from you, at up to point one light speed. You’re starting from a dead stop relative to them, so you need to accelerate into a stern chase. Maybe you can catch them, but it’ll take a while. While they watch you coming. That’s not exactly a surprise.”

  Geary nodded. “Those are the same reasons why we never planned for ambushes like that a century ago. But what if you have faster-than-light communications?”

  She paused. “Someone at the star you left could tell someone at the star you were going to that you were coming.”

  “And they’d know pretty accurately when you’d appear because jump physics are consistent. If you enter jump at x time here en route there, the journey will take y time.”

  Desjani shook her head. “But even then they wouldn’t know exactly where you’d be. They’d still have to be able to maneuver and accelerate much better than—Son of a bitch.” She gave him a stricken look. “They could do it.”

  “Yeah.” Geary slumped back, staring ahead of him. “The possibility didn’t occur to us because we can’t do it. But they have two big advantages that make it feasible. And because of the FTL communications, they might even know what our formation is like. We have to leave jump in the same formation we entered. There’s no way to maneuver in jump space.”

  “They’ll hit the auxiliaries, and maybe the assault transports. They’re all in the rear of our main subformation, with no escorts behind them.” Desjani pressed her palms against her eyes. “Can we get enough of our force reversed and able to cover those ships in time?”

  “It takes time to recover from jump,” Geary said bitterly. “And time to pivot ships and brake velocity so we can let the auxiliaries pass us. Even if we tell our comm systems to transmit prepared orders the instant we exit, it will still take precious moments for the other ships’ crews to recover enough to respond, and I have a nasty suspicion that every second will count.”

  Desjani pointed to the message from Mistral. “Keep it simple, and we can send the messages in jump.”

  Simple. Something simple that could counter what he hadn’t planned for at all.

  “You’ve still got almost seven hours before we leave jump to think of something,” Desjani added.

  “Oh, that helps take the pressure off.”

  “Sorry.”

  THE aliens were waiting at Alihi.

  Geary’s brain hadn’t begun to focus when he felt Dauntless swinging her bow up and around, the battle cruiser pivoting in response to maneuvering orders entered while the ship was still in jump. Dauntless was lighting off her main propulsion units, braking the velocity of the ship at the maximum rate her crew and structure could survive, when alarms began blaring from the combat systems. As Geary’s vision began to finally clear, he felt Dauntless shudder slightly as specter missiles launched on orders from combat systems given freedom to immediately engage targets assessed hostile.

  His message had gone to the other major warships in the main formation. Battle cruisers Dauntless, Daring, Victorious, and Intemperate, battleships Warspite, Vengeance, Revenge, Guardian, Fearless, Resolution , and Redoubtable. It had been as short and simple as required by the nature of jump space communications. Immediate Execute on exit, pivot one eight zero, brake point zero five, engage enemy. That was the fastest response he could create if the aliens were waiting to hit the back of his force.

  There might be enigma warships waiting in front of the jump exit, but if so, hopefully the heavy and light cruisers and the destroyers remaining in the main formation would be able to handle them.

  He finally managed to get a good look at his display as Dauntless’s hell lances started firing. Enigma warships were clawing their way toward the rear of the Alliance formation, the squat turtle shapes varying in size from rough equivalents to human destroyers to some massing a little more than heavy cruisers. Thirty . . . no forty. Forty-one. The courses of the enigma warships altered slightly as Dauntless, Daring, Victorious, and Intemperate slowed enough for the auxiliaries to lumber past, the battle cruisers pivoting and decelerating faster than the battleships could.

  Dauntless shuddered repeatedly as the aliens concentrated their fire on the four battle cruisers. Even though the battle cruisers were bow on to the enemy, their weaker shields were failing, and shots were penetrating to strike their lightly armored hulls. Geary had only a second to decide what to do, his hand hitting his comm co
ntrols as Daring staggered under a particularly bad barrage. “Dauntless, Daring, Victorious, and Intemperate, continue to brake velocity at maximum sustainable rate!”

  As the battered battle cruisers continued to slow, the aliens accelerated past them, aiming once again for the eight auxiliaries. Grapeshot from the battle cruisers hit the enigmas as they tore past, and Victorious caught one with its null field, carving out a large chunk of the alien ship.

  His display showed no other aliens around the jump exit, so Geary hastily sent another command. “All ships maneuver freely to engage the enemy. Captain Smythe, get your ships clear!”

  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.