The strain on Geary eased a bit, and he could have sworn he heard the structure of Dauntless also sigh with relief. He spared a glance at the display, where the path of the battle cruisers arced toward the asteroid, the time to intercept constantly backing off as the ships slowed their velocity.
“Marines are inside,” Carabali reported. “Possible booby-trap triggers identified. They’ll have to neutralize before proceeding.”
Damn. “We don’t have much room for delay, General.”
“Understood, Admiral.”
“Immediate execute, all units in Task Force Lima reduce braking velocity to point eight maximum,” Desjani ordered.
Sixteen minutes after Desjani gave her first order, and after several more adjustments to their braking, the battle cruisers slid to a halt relative to the asteroid, surrounding it. “All shuttles launch,” Desjani commanded.
From every battle cruiser, shuttles rocketed out, heading for the asteroid. Each carried a few Marine engineers loaded with breaching equipment and other gear, some medical personnel, a fleet engineer to identify any alien equipment that could be looted in the time available, and empty seats for the human prisoners who would hopefully be found within the asteroid. “Five minutes to first shuttle docking at that airlock,” Desjani told Geary.
“General Carabali,” Geary began.
“They’re past the traps,” Carabali announced. “Passing empty compartments. Equipment. Another airlock. Traps visible on this side. Estimated time to disarm two minutes.”
Desjani had her eyes on the alien warships. “We slowed down, they didn’t. They’ll see the light from our maneuvers in another ten minutes.”
Geary nodded. “I guess that’s when we find out if there’s still a way for the aliens to blow up this asteroid.” He eyed the main body of the fleet, still braking, the distance between it and the task force growing by the second. He didn’t need to run maneuvering calculations to know that he couldn’t turn those ships around and get them back here in time to make any difference. “It looks like it’ll be sixteen battle cruisers versus thirty-five alien warships.”
“Piece of cake,” Desjani remarked.
The main body’s formation was stretching oddly, though. Geary highlighted that area and saw that Dreadnaught was braking harder than ordered, Dependable and Conqueror matching her attempt to slow down. “Captain Geary, you’re overstressing your main propulsion units. Ease off and remain with the fleet.”
Desjani had noticed and shook her head. “She’s trying to keep those battleships close enough to support us. They can’t brake that fast.”
“And she should know that.”
He took another look at the light cruisers and destroyers still accelerating toward the area where the Marine might be. “General, if you can order that scout to light off a beacon, it would help.”
“Already done, Admiral. The scout should have already received that order, but we’ve seen no response, so he might still be in a slowed metabolism state. We just sent a remote activation command to the beacon.”
“Distress beacon picked up,” Lieutenant Castries reported.
Geary did a quick mental check of the position of the beacon and its movement relative to the cruisers and destroyers. “That Marine did slow a lot before his suit’s braking equipment failed. I think they can manage a recovery.”
“Someone owes a few thanks to their ancestors,” Desjani remarked.
“We’re past the airlock,” Carabali reported. “Another airlock, sealed, no traps. Blowing it now.”
“They’re moving,” Desjani announced.
“Alien warships accelerating onto intercept with our current position,” Lieutenant Yuon cried.
“We can hear you, Lieutenant,” Desjani said sharply. “All units in Task Force Lima, recover returning shuttles nearest to you without regard for home base.” She shrugged. “That should save a few minutes on the recovery,” she said to Geary.
He nodded absently, most of his attention shifting rapidly from the main body of the fleet to the progress of the Marines to the shuttles to the alien warships and back again and again. “We have roughly an hour before those warships get here.”
“Past final barrier,” Carabali reported. “Entering large open area, multiple structures arrayed along sides of the asteroid. It’s a town, all right. Humans sighted. Some are running toward our people, and some are running away.”
“First shuttle docking, dropping off passengers.”
“Initial estimates of human prisoners exceeds one hundred.”
“Power inside asteroid has failed. Cause unknown. Deploying portable lighting.”
“Enigma warships are fifty minutes from intercept.”
“Light cruiser Kusari reports estimated time to recovery of Marine scout is one hour, forty minutes.”
“Liberated prisoners being assembled, report that many of their number are hiding and barricading themselves inside their dwellings.”
Geary resisted the urge to slap his forehead in exasperation. The reaction by these isolated, imprisoned people was understandable even if stupid. “Permission granted to break down barricades, doors, walls, or any other private structure as necessary to recover humans without delay.”
Carabali seemed more annoyed than angry. “Request permission to use incapacitating agents if necessary to disable resisting humans.”
“Granted. We’re running out of time fast, General.”
“Admiral,” Captain Smythe said, “my engineers report that scans reveal the alien equipment on the asteroid is riddled with explosive devices. Trying to pull out any of it might well trigger self-destruct mechanisms unless we take the time to deactivate all possible means of activation.”
“How much time?” Geary demanded.
Smythe paused for only a moment. “At least an hour.”
“We don’t have an hour. Have your engineers do the best scans they can of the inside and outside of that equipment, then get them back on the shuttles. They’ve got twenty minutes.”
“First shuttle lifting from asteroid with thirty prisoners aboard,” Castries called.
“They must be packing them in tight,” Desjani muttered.
“Admiral!” It was the chief medical officer. “I’ve been evaluating what we can tell about the prisoners. They need to be medically isolated immediately and held there until they’re scanned for any biological or artificial threat.”
“Notify the ship’s doctors on each battle cruiser,” Geary snapped. “Have them inform their captains and ensure that’s done.”
“Twenty-five minutes until enigma warships achieve intercept of asteroid.”
“Sir, one of the alien warships has peeled off and seems to aiming for the Marine scout awaiting recovery.”
He would have to leave that to the light cruisers and destroyers. They didn’t need to be told that they needed to get that Marine before the alien warship did.
“Ration bar?” Desjani asked.
“No, thanks. Not hungry.”
“We’ve got half the shuttles recovered,” she added. “The other half are waiting on the let’s-hide-from-our-rescuers idiots that the Marines are prying out of their holes.”
“Twenty minutes to alien intercept.”
“Admiral, we’ve got equipment starting to blow inside that asteroid,” Carabali reported. “Cause unknown. Maybe dead-man circuits that activate after a certain period out of communication.”
“How long until you have the last humans out of there?” Geary shot back.
“Unknown. Still searching, Admiral.”
“You’ve got fifteen minutes, General.”
“Yes, sir.”
Desjani was sending orders. “Captain Duellos, your shuttle docks are full. Accelerate your battle cruisers toward the enemy and engage to buy us time and even the odds.”
“On our way,” Duellos responded. On the display, Inspire, Formidable , Brilliant, and Implacable began moving away from the asteroid, angling toward the alien
warships.
“Good call,” Geary said. “There’s no sense in those battle cruisers waiting here if they can’t take on any more shuttles. I should have thought of that.”
“You’re busy,” Desjani said, “and you gave me the responsibility for this part. But I would appreciate it if you would goose the Marines, so we can get the rest of those shuttles aboard before the aliens get here.”
“Pulling out,” Carabali reported. “We can’t be certain we got everyone, but the asteroid is coming apart inside, and the interior is depressurizing, so anyone we don’t have is going to be dead before we could find them. There must be dead-man circuits everywhere.”
“Understood,” Geary said. “Get your people out of there. How many prisoners have we recovered?”
“Three hundred thirty-three.”
“What?”
“Three hundred thirty-three,” Carabali repeated. “Yes, sir. It’s weird. Maybe it means something.” She focused elsewhere. “Now! I want every Marine out of there now! If those fleet engineers drag their feet, knock them out and haul them along!”
Small detonations rocked the surface of the asteroid, throwing out fragments that soared into space out of the weak gravitational pull, atmosphere venting in many places into the vacuum of space. Geary checked the main display. Six minutes until the alien warships reached them. “It’s going to be very tight.”
Desjani nodded. “Captain Tulev, get your division under way and engage the enemy.”
“Understood,” Tulev replied. Leviathan, Dragon, Steadfast, and Valiant began accelerating toward the oncoming enemy.
“Captain, our dock is full. Sealing it now.”
“Very well. Invincible, why is a shuttle hanging outside your dock?”
Vente sounded as stiff as usual. “I am following proper procedure for loading sequences—”
“Get that shuttle docked now, or I’ll have you shot! All units, we have three minutes! I do not intend engaging these bastards while we’re engaged in shuttle recovery and at rest relative to this rock!”
Duellos’s battle cruisers had reached the enemy, hurling out specters that the enemy twisted to try to dodge, then the two forces lashed each other as they tore past.
“Everyone is clear,” Carabali reported. “All personnel accounted for. The final shuttle is en route Incredible.”
Geary stared for a moment at the display centered on the asteroid, seeing large portions of its outer surface collapsing inward or bulging outward in response to the spasms inside it.
“All shuttles recovered, Captain. Incredible is sealing her dock.”
“All units in Task Force Lima, maneuver independently and engage the enemy!”
Twenty-nine enigma warships were still coming, but they had to get past Tulev’s battle cruisers first. Though they hadn’t had a long time to accelerate, the battle cruisers were still deadly, and the enigma warships had to go through them if they wanted to reach the asteroid.
Specters volleyed out, followed within moments by hell-lance fire and grapeshot as the two forces clashed.
“They hit Valiant hard,” Geary heard someone saying, then realized he had been the one who spoke. But only sixteen alien warships were still coming, and led by Dauntless, the eight remaining Alliance battle cruisers were accelerating furiously toward them.
Desjani’s hand danced over her firing controls, and Dauntless shuddered slightly as specter missiles launched, then the battle cruiser’s hell lances speared out as well, aimed and fired automatically by combat systems reacting far faster than any human could. Volleys of grapeshot followed in the instant before the far faster moving alien warships slashed through the human ships in the blink of an eye.
Geary kept his eyes on the display as it updated rapidly in response to sensor reports from every ship in the fleet. Only three alien warships were still moving, and they were still heading straight for the asteroid, making no attempt to turn or slow down. “What the hell?”
An instant later, the three surviving enigma warships smashed into the asteroid while moving at sixty thousand kilometers per second.
No one spoke for a long moment as the displays updated to show nothing but a rapidly expanding cloud of dust where the asteroid and three enigma warships had once been. Geary finally tore his eyes from that, only to see that, once again, every other nearby enigma warship, whether badly damaged or completely knocked out, had self-destructed.
It was close to half an hour later when they saw the sole remaining enigma warship in the star system veering off when the Alliance light cruisers and half the destroyers came right for it as the rest of the destroyers braked to pick up the Marine. “Why do they sometimes kill themselves for what seem to be totally unnecessary reasons, and other times they show reasonable discretion in the face of the odds against them?” Geary wondered. His eyes went back to the assessments of the damage to the battle cruisers, focusing on Valiant and her seventeen dead.
“I don’t know,” Desjani replied, “and I don’t care anymore. If any of the aliens come within range of my weapons, I’ll remove any options from their futures.”
The destroyers intercepting the Marine slowed further, until Carbine could snag the suit and haul the scout aboard. “Goal!” The triumphant message arrived from the rescue force several minutes later, the entire group of light cruisers and destroyers by then accelerating back to the main body of the fleet.
“The destroyers are asking for ransom,” Carabali reported to Geary, looking considerably more relaxed than she had during the operation at the asteroid.
“Anything the Marines aren’t prepared to pay?”
“We’ll buy rounds for their crews at any bar wherever the fleet has liberty next, Admiral. Thank you.”
“I wasn’t going to leave that scout, General.”
“You didn’t have to make that decision, Admiral.”
Desjani glanced at Geary as he ended that call. “You should get some rest.”
“So should you.”
“I told you first.”
“Damn good job back there.”
“Why, thank you, Admiral. Can I still shoot Vente?”
“No.” Geary closed his eyes for a moment, a great wave of weariness washing over him now that the days of tension had ended in success. “That threat did seem to motivate him, though. Another couple of minutes, and we’d still have been too close to that asteroid when those alien ships turned it into high-velocity junk.”
Her voice sounded a little distant. “We had to succeed this time because we can’t do it again. Next time we come within a light hour of any place they’re holding humans, they’ll blow it apart.”
He knew she was right. This had been a victory, but it had ensured no similar victories could be won.
GEARY took the time to gather the fleet and organize it back into a single formation despite the appearance of almost twenty more enigma warships at other jump points. The days required for that and the journey to the jump point they planned to use next also provided time to learn something about the humans they had rescued.
“They’ve never seen any of the aliens,” Lieutenant Iger reported to Geary. “Even the ones who were captured as opposed to being born in there.” He activated another window showing a man who looked well past middle age. “This man was a crew member on a Syndic HuK. He doesn’t know how long ago that was because the humans inside the asteroid had no means of telling time, but by comparing his account to the records the Syndics provided, it was probably forty years ago when a HuK transiting through the border star system of Ina disappeared.”
The old man began speaking. “I don’t know what happened. I was at my watch station, and suddenly we started taking hits out of nowhere. I remember that. Everyone yelling ‘where’s it coming from?’ Then we got orders to evacuate, and I made it to an escape pod with two others from the crew, and we punched clear, and that’s the last I remembered until I woke up in that place. An asteroid. I always thought it must be an asteroid. I don’t kn
ow what happened to the other two who were in the pod with me. I was the only one from our mobile force unit who showed up there. No. No one saw me arrive. I was just there. The lights would go out sometimes, then we’d all fall asleep, and when we woke up, there might be a new person lying next to the lock, or maybe some crates of food, or somebody who had died would be gone. When someone died, we knew that either a new prisoner would show up eventually, or one of the women would become pregnant and have a child. Always the same number of us. Yes. Three hundred thirty-three. Don’t know why.”
The freed prisoner had stopped speaking, blinking away tears. “I know you’re Alliance, but . . . can I go home, sir? It’s been a long time, and I thought I’d die in that place. I want to go home, sir.”
Geary looked away, trying to control his emotions, trying not to let pity for that man and hate for his captors sway his decisions. How would we have treated aliens that we captured? Maybe not the Alliance. But the Syndics, they could have built something like that asteroid prison. “He can’t tell us anything, Lieutenant Iger?”
“No, sir. None of them can.”
The fleet’s chief medical officer had an only slightly more encouraging report. “We didn’t find any biological agents in them, or evidence that any such had been tested. But they did have nanodevices inside them, which outside the asteroid would have triggered fatal reactions if we hadn’t neutralized them as quickly as we did.”
Another form of dead-man switch. “How’s their health now?”
The doctor shrugged. “Not bad, considering. They had a closed community. Human-origin equipment and devices for survival, medical care and the like. Two of the prisoners had enough medical training to use the equipment and take care of all but the most serious afflictions. They grew crops, and occasionally, quantities of foodstuffs that had clearly been manufactured by humans appeared near the air-lock. From the state of their health, they’ve had adequate nutrition, though of course the diet lacked variety most of the time.”
“What about mentally? How are they?”
The doctor looked down before answering. “Fragile. They had constructed a society inside that asteroid, something stable enough to pass on knowledge and maintain order. There’s a council of sorts that made decisions. But they’ve been so isolated, subject to the whims of totally unseen and unknown captors. Now . . . some of them are excited at the thought of seeing the sky. Others are terrified of the same thing. Their world, their source of stability, has been destroyed, and not just in the literal sense of the asteroid being shattered.”
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught Page 33