The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught

by Jack Campbell

  “No, sir,” Iger said. “Just some very nicely camouflaged solar cell fields.”

  Duellos nodded. “I can’t imagine they would live inside the asteroid with humans, even if separated by a strong barrier. But if we have no idea how large this restricted zone is, I don’t know how this speculation helps us.”

  “They need some basis for a restricted area,” Bradamont said. “Both we and the Syndics measure those in light seconds, because it’s a simple standard, big enough to provide security but small enough not to be triggered by anyone blundering into the wrong area by accident.”

  “How many light seconds do the Syndics use?” Tulev asked.

  “One.” No one questioned how Bradamont would know that.

  “The same as our standard space exclusion zones.”

  Duellos frowned in thought. “The enigmas are certain to use some other means of measurement, but our parameters are based on practical considerations, as Commander Bradamont says. The physics are the same for the enigmas. If we stay at least one light second away, and don’t seem to be paying any attention to the asteroid, that may be a safe distance.”

  “Make it four hundred thousand kilometers, well over a light second,” Tulev said. “But, still too far. That leaves plenty of reaction time for defenses or self-destruct mechanisms if we turn toward the asteroid. We have to reach it, match velocity and orbit, disable alien equipment on the surface, access the interior, and evacuate the humans living inside. How long to accomplish all of that? Half an hour from the closest point we dare approach?”

  “More like an hour,” Desjani suggested, “even if you’re just using battle cruisers.”

  Bradamont spoke again, more forcefully. “The auxiliaries can manufacture small stealth craft carrying small landing parties. If we can—” She stopped as she saw Captain Smythe shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry, Commander,” Smythe said. “In the time we have, with what we have, I can’t promise being able to build anything large enough to carry a few people yet stealthy enough to have a decent probability of staying undetected.”

  “Who would you send on a mission like that?” Badaya asked, the question apparently rhetorical yet also clearly aimed at Bradamont.

  She flushed, but her voice stayed steady. “I volunteer to lead that mission.”

  Geary broke the silence that followed Bradamont’s statement. “Unless we have a reasonable chance of success, there won’t be any mission. There’s no sense in killing our volunteers and the humans inside that asteroid by attempting a rescue with only a small chance of succeeding.”

  “We can’t leave them,” Bradamont insisted.

  “I agree,” Badaya said, “but—”

  “Excuse me.” General Carabali had been speaking with someone outside the software, and now her voice easily carried across those of the others. “The Marines can do it.”

  Badaya raised his eyebrows. “Four hundred thousand kilometers is a long jump, General. I don’t think Marines could manage that even if you told them there was beer on the asteroid.”

  “They might if it was free beer, but we won’t have to motivate them in that manner.” A diagram popped up before Carabali. “Because of the nature of this mission to investigate the alien race, our equipment load-out includes a larger than usual amount of maximum-stealth configured armor, enough to equip thirty of my Marine scouts. I had some of my subordinates run the numbers, and we can do this. If the fleet launches those scouts toward the asteroid while passing by at four hundred thousand kilometers out, we should have a high probability of avoiding detection during launch and during the transit to the asteroid. Once on the surface of the asteroid, the scouts can plant scramblers and jammers, as well as disabling charges on any visible alien equipment. By blinding alien systems and jamming incoming and outgoing transmissions, we should be able to give the fleet time to reach the asteroid and launch shuttles to dock and pull people out of there as well as recover the scouts.”

  Tulev leaned in. “What velocity will the scouts be traveling?”

  “We need it to be slow enough to not stand out too clearly against background space, and slow enough for the suit systems to manage a braked landing on the asteroid that will neither kill the scouts nor have a high chance of their being spotted.” Carabali pointed to the diagram. “Average velocity would be four thousand kilometers per hour, though we’d want to be launched faster than that and be braking gradually during the last portion.”

  Commander Neeson gave the general a startled look. “You can brake down from four thousand klicks an hour to a safe landing velocity and remain stealthy?”

  “That’s right,” Carabali said. “My scouts say they can do it, and they’d be the ones placing their lives on the line.”

  “Averaging four thousand kilometers per hour will still require four days’ travel time,” Geary objected. “Can your scout suits keep someone alive that long, plus the time needed to go over the asteroid and plant those charges and jammers?”

  Carabali nodded. “We can hang on some extended-duty life-support packs, and use meds to slow down the metabolism of the scouts during the trip to the asteroid. That will both reduce the demands on their life support and the amount of heat and power usage that the stealth equipment has to conceal.”

  “Can the jammers work against anything the aliens have?” Badaya questioned. “We don’t even know how their faster-than-light comms work.”

  “The jammers have been upgraded using some ideas gleaned from the Syndic device for preventing gate collapses,” Carabali explained. “Just like our system security can eliminate the quantum probability–based alien worms without knowing how they work, we have a high degree of confidence that the jammers can halt the alien comms.”

  A long silence this time, as everyone studied Carabali’s work, finally broken by Duellos as he pointed to part of the depiction of the star system. “There’s an enigma installation on the second largest moon orbiting that planet. If we head toward it at the right time, we’ll have that as an apparent goal, apparently repeating our attempt to examine a single isolated installation as at Limbo, but we can pass part of the fleet within four hundred thousand kilometers of the asteroid’s orbit while seeming to head for that moon.”

  “It’s doable,” Badaya declared, and a hundred voices joined him in agreement.

  “If you use the battle cruisers,” Desjani added, giving Geary a hard look. “All of the battle cruisers. We’re going to have to move as fast as possible.”

  Geary kept his eyes on the display for a moment longer, thinking of the lives riding on this decision. He didn’t want to make this decision. But Carabali had proven her competence, and his fleet officers felt they could do their part, and those humans needed to be rescued if it could possibly be done. Ironically, one of the things making the operation feasible was the lessons learned from the Syndic device he had bargained with Iceni for. “All right. We’ll do it.”

  This time, everyone cheered.

  IT had the same strange feeling as when walking past a police officer even when you had done nothing. Look calm, look innocent, look non-threatening. That was quite a bit harder to do when you were a fleet carrying enough firepower to devastate entire planets, and you were trespassing in a star system where you were definitely not wanted, and the police officers were in fact aliens with a demonstrated eagerness to kill you and a willingness to suicide in defense of their privacy, and when you were in fact plotting to do something of which the local “police” would not approve at all.

  Geary waited until the right moment to swing the fleet onto a course to intercept the moon that was to be their apparent target. There wasn’t anything unusual about shuttles winging between warships, carrying parts, supplies, and skilled personnel, but over the last several hours many of those routine shuttle flights had in fact transferred Marine scouts and their equipment to the battleships making up the Fourth Battleship Division. Warspite, Vengeance, Revenge, and Guardian would be the closest major warships
to the asteroid’s orbit when the human fleet went past, and that was when each would spit out seven or eight Marines aimed at where the asteroid would be four days later, the launches further obscured by some repositioning of the cruisers and destroyers near the battleships as well as some shuttle activity.

  “This is Admiral Geary. At time one five, all units come port zero four one degrees, up zero six degrees, maintain velocity at point one light speed.” It felt a little strange using the human conventions for maneuvering in a star system when this star system had probably never seen a human spacecraft. But the old conventions had been developed to ensure that every ship understood what other ships were doing and what was meant, no matter how they might be pointed or aligned relative to each other. Port meant turning away from the star, starboard turning toward the star, while up and down were designated as either side of the plane of the star system. It was totally arbitrary, but had worked well enough to remain unchanged for centuries.

  He wondered how the aliens handled that problem. Was it a problem to them at all? Why the hell won’t they talk to us? Imagine the things we could learn just from understanding how another intelligent species sees the universe. What a waste.

  “Getting moody again, Admiral?” Desjani asked as she signed off on some administrative task. “Have you heard from Jane Geary yet?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “She volunteered her battleship division to launch the Marines, right?”

  “Correct again. I told her the decision was based entirely on which battleships could be closest to the asteroid’s orbit with the least maneuvering within the formation. We want to do as little as possible to tip off the aliens.” Geary gave Desjani a curious look. “Have you figured out what’s motivating Jane?”

  “No. I don’t think it’s what was bothering Kattnig”—she paused to make a religious gesture invoking mercy—“but it might be related.”

  “Proving herself?”

  “She is a Geary, Admiral. You know what they’re like.”

  “I wish I did.” Geary sat back, watching on the display as his fleet swung smoothly around and settled out on the course toward the alien moon. “The hardest part is going to be waiting for a few days after the launch, then turning this fleet around to go past the asteroid’s orbit again, all the while not knowing if the Marine scouts made it and are accomplishing their mission. They can’t send any status reports, no updates, nothing. They’ll activate the jammers and disabling charges at a set time, and we need to already be charging for that asteroid when that happens. And those thirty-five alien warships will surely charge us at that point.”

  Desjani grinned. “Finally, we get to have some fun.”

  “WARSPITE reports one crew member injured in an arcing mishap,” the comm watch announced.

  “Very well.” Geary glanced at Desjani, who gave him a thumbs-up. With the quantum-probability worms scrubbed from systems on the human warships, the aliens shouldn’t have any means of accessing the fleet data net or comm systems. But “shouldn’t” didn’t mean “couldn’t,” so that message had been agreed upon as a signal that all the launches had gone down without any problems.

  A very long two days later, with the alien moon still more than a light hour distant, Geary brought the fleet back around as if heading back to the jump point. A freighter had already left the alien installation, repeating the pattern at Limbo. “When they see this, they should decide that we’re giving up this time rather than waste more effort chasing things that are going to be blown into tiny pieces.”

  Desjani nodded absentmindedly, her eyes on her own display. “You know, Admiral, even if the jamming works, and even if all the alien sensors and comm gear on the surface of that asteroid are taken out, we’re still going to have the alien warships coming at that asteroid as soon as they realize we’re heading that way. We have no idea how many people we’ll need to get off that asteroid, or how hard it will be to get inside it without triggering any booby traps. It’s going to be tight.”

  “I know,” Geary said. “That’s why you’re going to be calling the maneuvers when the battle cruisers brake to match orbit with the asteroid.” She gave him a startled look that transitioned to a grin as Geary continued. “I’m pretty good at that kind of thing, but you’re better when it comes to maneuvering battle cruisers. You’re better than anyone else in the fleet.”

  “Yes,” Desjani agreed. “Yes, I am.”

  “As well as being unusually modest for a battle cruiser captain.”

  “That, too.” Desjani switched her gaze back to her display, where she was working simulations of the charge to the asteroid. “Oh, this is going to be good.”

  THE Marine scouts should have landed over eight hours ago. They had orders to activate the jammers, scramblers, and disabling charges at exactly zero four forty, when the fleet would be passing nearest to the asteroid’s orbit on the fleet’s return toward the jump point.

  Aside from the asteroid itself, the nearest alien presence or surveillance devices they had been able to spot were the warships, which had stayed lurking a light hour behind and to the starboard side of the Alliance fleet, matching every human maneuver an hour after it was made. But in the last day, as the human fleet’s path approached the orbit of the asteroid and this time drew closer to the asteroid itself, those alien warships had slowly closed the distance until they were only half a light hour away from the fleet.

  Now it was zero four thirty eight. The asteroid was forty-five light seconds away, a mere thirteen million, five hundred thousand kilometers. At point one light speed, the human ships could cover that distance in about seven and a half minutes. But it wouldn’t do much good to reach the asteroid traveling that fast since the human ships would then shoot past, unable to match speed with the asteroid. The “charge” would actually involve slowing down at a rate that would take the least time and yet leave the battle cruisers exactly matching the asteroid’s velocity when they reached it. Only the battle cruisers had enough propulsion capability to brake their velocity that quickly, and they had to start immediately, or even they might overshoot their target, but they also had to avoid braking too fast and taking longer than necessary to reach the asteroid when every second counted.

  Which was where Tanya Desjani came in.

  Geary took a deep breath, then sent the orders. “Task Force Lima, detach and maneuver per orders from Captain Desjani on Dauntless. All other units, come starboard zero four five degrees, down zero two degrees, and begin braking to point zero two light speed at time four zero.”

  Desjani was sending her own commands the moment Geary finished. “All units in Task Force Lima, immediate execute come starboard four six degrees, down zero two degrees, begin braking velocity at maximum.”

  Usually, she waited silently while he concentrated on the right feel, the right moments for when to execute changes in vectors, but this time it was Desjani who was issuing those orders for the task force while Geary watched the battle cruisers veer away from the rest of the fleet and decelerate at a rate that pushed him painfully back against his seat and caused the structure of Dauntless to groan in protest. Despite the temptation to watch Desjani’s work, to make sure she was doing it as well as possible, he had to let her do the job he had given her while he kept an eye on the rest of the fleet, slowing much more gradually and curving on a slightly wider course, which would intercept the asteroid farther along its orbit and close to an hour after the battle cruisers reached their objective. Geary also watched the aliens, though it would be half an hour before their warships saw the light from the fleet’s maneuvers and realized what the fleet was doing.

  Wincing at the effort of moving under the forces leaking past the inertial dampers, he called General Carabali. “I want to know the moment you hear or see anything from the scouts.”

  “Should be coming in any second now, Admiral.” Carabali paused. “Status report. Linking to you, sir.”

  A secondary display popped into existence to one
side of Geary. On it, the asteroid rotated with cumbersome dignity, its surface now pocked with many more symbols representing not just the positions of the Marine scouts but also all of the alien relays, antennas, sensors, and other devices the Marines had been able to locate. Some of the symbols marking the alien equipment flashed red, indicating that disabling charges planted by the Marines had destroyed them, while other symbols pulsed yellow to indicate the equipment was being jammed.

  Also visible was a large and cunningly concealed airlock detected by the scouts, which led inside the asteroid. “Request permission to proceed with entry,” Carabali said.

  “Permission granted. Why do I count only twenty-nine Marines?”

  “I’ve just been informed that the scout unit leader believes one suit failed to brake velocity enough and overshot the asteroid,” Carabali said tonelessly.

  Ancestors preserve us. Geary activated another circuit. “Eleventh Light Cruiser Squadron, Twenty-third and Thirty-second Destroyer Squadrons, detach from fleet formation immediately, proceed to attempt intercept and pickup with one Marine scout who is believed to have overshot the asteroid.”

  Carabali let out a breath. “Thank you, Admiral. My scouts will be blowing the airlock any moment now.”

  Geary took a moment to take a long, calming breath himself, thinking of that lone Marine plummeting through space, life support slowly being expended. “Whether we can manage an intercept is going to depend on how much that Marine’s velocity was slowed, General. If that scout kept going at four thousand kilometers an hour, we may not be able to get there in time.”

  “If the enigma warships go after the ships you sent—”

  “I doubt that will happen, General, once the aliens realize that we’re cracking open their human cage.”

  Desjani sent another order. “Immediate execute, all units in Task Force Lima reduce braking velocity to point nine maximum.”