The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught

by Jack Campbell

  GEARY was in his stateroom when Badaya called again as his task force rejoined the rest of the fleet, the ships returning to their places in the larger formation. “Sorry I couldn’t get that freighter for you, Admiral, but at least we got that partial body. Ugly, aren’t they?”

  “It’s hard to tell with all the damage to it,” Geary said.

  “That’s a point. No major problems to report, but I’d appreciate it if you’d have a stern talk with Invincible’s commanding officer.”

  “Now what?”

  “Captain Vente isn’t taking it well that this is my division. He keeps making digs about me being junior to him, so he should be in charge. During this operation, he kept balking at orders to show his unhappiness that I was in command of the task force instead of him.”

  That wasn’t a surprise to hear. “He hasn’t done anything justifying a formal reprimand?” Which might also justify relieving him of command if it was a serious enough infraction.

  “Unfortunately, no,” Badaya said, twisting his mouth in disgust. “Vente’s got admiral’s insignia in his eyes, and he’s politically smart enough to avoid going over the line while he’s getting his major command ticket punched before he returns to headquarters and his hoped-for promotion.”

  “Somebody should have told him that promotions have hit a brick wall.”

  “Ha! At least as far as he’s concerned, right, Admiral? But I’ve dealt with plenty of Vente’s type in my time. They always think their connections will help them get what others can’t.”

  Bracing himself for an unpleasant but necessary task, Geary called Vente. Nearly twenty minutes later, long enough to annoy Geary but not long enough to justify chewing him out for that as well, Vente’s image and frown appeared standing in Geary’s stateroom. “Captain Vente, I need to emphasize for you that I do not disrupt command relationships or positions based purely on seniority. Captain Badaya has successfully and competently led his division for some time, and he will continue doing so.”

  Vente’s expression soured even more. “That is contrary to regulations.”

  “No, it is not, or you’d be citing the relevant regulations to me right now. Let me be clear that I respect the service and honor of all my officers, and I will not allow any of my officers to be treated in any manner that reflects disrespect for them.”

  “Admiral Chelak—”

  “Is not in command of this fleet. Have I made my expectations clear, Captain Vente?”

  “Yes . . . Admiral.”

  After Vente left, Geary ordered the fleet’s support systems to provide him with more frequent and detailed updates on Invincible’s status. Give me a reason to relieve this man of command. Anything that I can justify. And let’s hope it happens soon.

  THE medical representatives were looking around the fleet conference room with ill-concealed curiosity. Attendance at the conferences had been increasingly restricted in recent decades, as the conferences degenerated into freewheeling political contests to decide fleet commanders and vote on courses of action. By the time Geary was awakened from survival sleep, it was rare for anyone but the commanding officers of the fleet’s ships to attend such meetings. But Geary had imposed much more discipline, and the conferences no longer featured the same fireworks, which probably explained the disappointment the doctors were showing.

  The surgeon who had been in charge of the alien autopsy was giving a presentation, accompanied by virtual images that would have been stomach-turning for nonphysicians even if the images hadn’t been three-dimensional and as real-looking as if actual body parts were floating over the conference table. “We can’t be certain why this specimen survived as well as it did, but an analysis run using injury re-creation software rates as a high probability that the individual represented here was not physically aboard the freighter when it was destroyed. A reanalysis of records from the last moments of the freighter’s existence identified a stealthy object being ejected from the freighter several seconds before it exploded.”

  “An escape pod?” Duellos asked in surprise.

  “Very likely. The distance and the structure of the pod itself would have shielded the occupant a bit.” The surgeon indicated various organs. “Enough of the neck survived to identify a dual breathing system. We believe this skin flap would close, diverting breathing intake from this multichambered lung to these organs. They were very delicate, and not much has survived, but we think it likely that they worked the same way gills do.”

  “Amphibious in every sense of the word!” Dr. Setin exclaimed, pleased that his experts had called that one.

  “Most likely,” the surgeon responded. “There’s not enough left of the eyes to be certain what wavelengths they were optimized for. It may have had six appendages, though how many of those are arms and how many legs is impossible to say from the state of this sample. We can identify the probable functions of most of the organs we found, but there’s not much of those. It’s clearly a carbon-based life-form, similar to our own basic makeup, and oxygen-breathing. The brain was very badly damaged. We can approximate the size, but identifying functional areas will be extremely difficult. One thing that does seem apparent is that the brain lacks bilateral symmetry. In more primitive alien life-forms that we’ve seen on human-colonized worlds, this translates into a lack of right- or left-handedness.”

  “Can you tell what it eats?” someone asked.

  “No. The digestive system is completely gone except for a few scraps. It could be a carnivore, a vegetarian, or an omnivore.”

  “Did enough of the fingers remain to see if it had fingernails or claws?” Dr. Shwartz asked.

  “One of the fingers was intact enough to see a hard structure on the end, sort of like a conical fingernail covering the tip.”

  “That could be used to kill prey, or to dig up vegetables,” Shwartz commented.

  Commander Lomand, Titan’s commanding officer, had been listening intently and gestured for attention. “Sir, you spoke of gills. You’re certain that this creature had water-breathing capability?”

  The surgeon nodded. “Yes.”

  “We’ve seen some of where they live,” Dr. Setin interjected. “Towns and cities that straddle the coastline rather than sitting on one side or the other. Water is an amazing substance, you know. Incredibly useful. Oxygen is a powerful source of fuel, so there’s no surprise in seeing another highly evolved species using it. And carbon is immensely flexible. They’re all tailor-made for supporting complex life. Most of the advanced life-forms we’ve found are carbon-based and oxygen-breathing.”

  Commander Lomand’s fingers had been tapping out some rapid calculations, and he gave a cry of satisfaction. “I’ve run some initial calculations, Admiral, and checked them with some engineers on Titan who have some ship design expertise. We’ve observed the ability of the alien warships to accelerate and maneuver faster than our own ships can. If the alien warships are filled with water, instead of atmosphere, it would cushion the crew against the forces of acceleration, adding considerably to the effectiveness of inertial dampers.”

  “Enough to explain the ability to maneuver that we’ve seen?” Commander Neeson demanded.

  “If the warships also had significantly larger power cores for their size than comparable human warships.”

  “We haven’t picked up indications of that,” Badaya said.

  “Yes, we have,” Lomand said. “The force of the power core overloads that have destroyed the alien warships that we’ve encountered. Those could be explained by higher efficiency levels, or by larger cores using the same basic principles as ours.”

  Smythe spoke carefully, trying not to publicly embarrass one of his officers. “We haven’t seen emission levels from the alien warships consistent with larger power cores, have we?”

  “No, sir. But if the hulls are filled with water, that would act as an additional insulator against anything emitted by the power cores. The water would not only help protect the crews from the emissions but also prev
ent us from remotely detecting how large the power cores were.”

  Captain Smythe had been talking to someone on Tanuki, and nodded. “I can confirm Commander Lomand’s calculations. The force of the core overloads we’ve seen could be explained by cores of a size larger than those we use but still within parameters able to fit within the alien hulls.”

  “Water masses much more than atmosphere,” Tulev objected. “Would this not have a negative effect on their maneuverability?”

  “If the hulls were big enough. The amount of water increases dramatically as the internal volume of the hull balloons in response to larger external dimensions.”

  “No battleships,” Desjani commented. “That’s why they don’t have anything much bigger than a cruiser.”

  Neeson was frowning as he studied something. “Even with the water insulation, having power cores that size in hulls that small wouldn’t be good for the crews over the long run.”

  “Maybe they’re not as vulnerable to the emissions,” Smythe suggested, looking to the surgeon, who just shook his head to indicate an inability to answer that.

  “More likely, they don’t care that much about the welfare of their crews,” Captain Vitali said.

  Dr. Setin spoke with exaggerated diplomacy. “Clearly, the enigma race has a high level of willingness to sacrifice individuals for the good of the race as a whole. Admiral Geary asked my group to assess what we believe would happen if this fleet attempted to get close to some other installation, or a planet, to learn more about the enigma race. We have concluded that there is a high probability of mass destruction initiated by the enigma race to avoid leaving anything that will allow us to learn more.”

  “What if they knew we already had this body?” Duellos asked. “Would that make them conclude there was no sense in committing mass suicide to prevent us learning more?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on the nature of what drives their obsession with remaining hidden. If it is deeply engraven in their very nature, then knowing that we have learned what we have might cause them to react with even higher levels of violence. I’m basing that on what we know of human and animal psychology, but that’s all we have to go with.”

  “They’re crazy,” Badaya said, drawing nods of agreement.

  “They’re different,” Dr. Shwartz replied. “This obsession with remaining hidden could be very deeply ingrained in them, something they don’t question and can’t deviate from because it was written in their distant ancestry as they evolved. Try to imagine how humans would look to aliens, with our constant, overriding obsession with sex.”

  General Carabali snorted derisively. “Humans are occasionally capable of going a short time without thinking about sex or letting it drive their actions. I’m speaking for the female of the species, of course.”

  “I once went several seconds without thinking about sex,” Duellos retorted. “Though it did cause me to question my own masculinity. The fact is, though, that whatever drives the enigmas’ obsession with privacy, it’s something so powerful they are quite literally willing to die for it. And to kill to preserve it. No matter how much we may speculate on other aspects of the enigmas, there is now no doubt that much is true of them.”

  “Speaking of motivations,” Jane Geary said, “does anyone have any idea why that particular alien tried to escape from the freighter?”

  A long pause ensued, then Shwartz nodded toward Setin. “Perhaps this particular alien was crazy, by the standards of the enigma race, that is. He, she, it . . . didn’t want to die for the purpose of keeping us in the dark about their race.”

  “A coward?” Badaya laughed. “Mind you, I’d say that particular alien had more common sense than the others, not wanting to die for that reason, but they’d call it a coward, wouldn’t they?”

  “Doubtless,” Setin agreed.

  Geary looked down the length of the table, seeing everyone looking back at him for his decision. “I see no purpose to be served in trying to examine more closely the remaining enigma presence in this star system. They might have trouble totally wiping out their own towns and cities, but they might also have the means to do just as much damage as they did to their installation. We’re here to learn what we can, and it seems we aren’t likely to learn much more detail. If what we’re speculating about their technology is true, the main thing we’d still want to get our hands on is their faster-than-light communications system, but the odds of getting that seem too small to measure even on a quantum scale. Therefore, I’m going to order the fleet on a series of jumps, seeing how many more enigma-controlled star systems we can look over before heading back for Alliance space. Our single goal now is to gain more understanding of the strength and size of the enigma-controlled region though our emissaries will continue to broadcast what I suspect are futile offers to establish meaningful contact.”

  He waited for comments or questions, but none came. “Thank you. I’ll issue maneuvering orders soon.”

  After most of the officers had vanished, Dr. Setin lingered while Dr. Shwartz whispered furiously at him. “Admiral, there is something I wish to discuss,” Setin said. “Perhaps, a single human, left behind when the fleet leaves, could learn more about—”

  “No.”

  “I would be volunteering. The opportunity—”

  “I can’t allow that, Doctor. I’m sorry. From what the Syndics told us, the enigmas have already captured any number of humans. They would have no reason at all to keep you alive.”

  Setin still stood there, irresolute, until Dr. Shwartz said something else to him. “Yes, that’s so,” Setin conceded. “Perhaps we’ll find another intelligent species on one of these jumps you’re planning.”

  “That would be nice, Doctor.” Especially if it was an alien race that wasn’t insane by human standards.

  THE fleet took a long jump toward a star newly christened as Tartarus, Captain Desjani having been disappointed to discover that there was already a star in Syndic space named Purgatory. Although, as she pointed out, Syndic space was exactly where anyone would expect to find a star with the name Purgatory.

  Tartarus resembled Limbo in its population of enigmas though Geary was bothered that the number of warships following the Alliance fleet was steadily growing and now numbered thirty-five. But there was no hypernet gate there, and after Dr. Setin begged, Geary agreed to linger in the star system long enough to send out surveillance probes and try one last time to establish meaningful communications with the aliens.

  Neither method having discovered anything over the course of several days, he was preparing to order the fleet to depart when an urgent call came for him.

  “Sir?” Lieutenant Iger seemed to be breathless for a moment. “Admiral, we’ve found some humans.”

  THIRTEEN

  A single image appeared beside Iger, showing some blurred figures. “We only discovered it by chance,” Iger explained. “One of the surveillance probes we launched cut across a data feed coming from this asteroid.” Another image popped up, showing an asteroid about forty kilometers across, which was rotating at a decent rate of speed. “The intercept only lasted a fraction of a second, but we caught an encrypted video stream and were able to break out enough detail to see this.”

  Geary squinted at the ill-defined shapes. Definitely not the enigmas, and apparently human despite the lack of clear detail. “They’re on that asteroid?”

  “In that asteroid, Admiral,” Iger said. “We’re certain that’s been hollowed out. We checked the rotation, and it’s enough to provide roughly three-quarters of a standard gravity to someone standing on the inside surface of the asteroid.” Symbols glowed on the asteroid’s outer surface. “We’ve been able to spot some anomalies that probably represent enigma communications and sensor antennas. It’s not unusual to find artifacts like that on asteroids in human-occupied star systems, items left behind by miners, but these are well concealed, and the enigmas don’t usually seem to leave anything lying around.”

  Inside an aster
oid. No way to escape, and no way to see out where the enigmas were. “The perfect prison from the aliens’ perspective.”

  “Yes, sir.” Instead of being proud or pleased by the discovery, Lieutenant Iger grimaced. “I . . . don’t know of any way to get them out of there.”

  Tartarus. Apparently the name for this star system was a fitting one.

  THE hundreds of officers around the table in the fleet conference room listened with growing enthusiasm as Iger laid out his information, but as the intelligence officer stopped, Tulev shook his head slowly. “If we move one kilometer toward that asteroid, they will destroy it. They are willing to kill their own. They will not hesitate to kill those humans, too.”

  “How close can we get before they do that?” Badaya asked.

  Lieutenant Iger also shook his head. “I have no idea, sir. Based on our experience at Limbo, the aliens will wait until they are certain of our objective before they destroy it. And this particular target is very well hidden. If we hadn’t been keyed by the intercepted transmission, we probably wouldn’t have had any reason to study the asteroid closely and wouldn’t have discovered the equipment concealed on the surface of the asteroid. As long as they don’t believe we know humans are there, they probably won’t destroy the asteroid just because we head in that general direction.”

  “Probably,” Armus repeated with a grimace.

  “It’s the best we have, sir.”

  Bradamont had been eyeing the depiction of the Tartarus Star System floating over the table. “It must be a restricted zone for them. If we had aliens in an asteroid, we wouldn’t allow unauthorized ships to get too close. If we passed inside that restricted area, it could also serve as the trigger for when the aliens decide to destroy the asteroid.”

  “That’s plausible,” Armus conceded. “Something triggered automatically by a proximity alert, or by a faster-than-light signal from elsewhere in the star system. There’s no sign of alien presence on the exterior of the asteroid?”