“And they remotely activated Alliance systems,” Desjani added, pointing to the tugs. “They must have remotely overridden access codes and authorization requirements and safety interfaces on the tugs. And now they’ve remotely lit off the tugs’ propulsion and set a vector for them. The Dancers may be allies of ours, but when did they develop that capability?”
“Admiral,” Lieutenant Yuon announced, now breathless. “All of the dark ship formations are turning away.”
Geary switched his gaze back to the dark ship formations, blinking in surprise at his display where vectors on the dark ships had begun swinging wildly. “They were turning for more intercepts and attacks on our formations. Now they’re coming about as fast as they can onto other vectors.”
“All of those other vectors are in the same general . . . they’re heading for Invincible,” Desjani said, frowning as she studied her display. “I’m certain that’s how they’ll steady out. They are going after Invincible.”
“To the dark ships, Invincible must look like a huge threat even though she is nearly weaponless,” Geary said. “A literally huge threat. It must take priority over any other target as far as the dark ship AIs are concerned. A diversion. The Dancers gave us a diversion, something to get the dark ships off our backs for a short period.”
“A more-than-short period,” Desjani replied. “The dark ships are also about twenty light-minutes from Invincible, which is moving away from all of us. Just because of the distance involved, it will take the dark ships probably about an hour and a half to catch Invincible and more time to destroy her.”
That sank in. Invincible was not simply a distraction. She would also be a sacrifice. “Ancestors forgive us. The knowledge that ship holds, the things we could have learned from it . . .”
“One more crime to lay at the feet of the idiots responsible for this,” Desjani said in a low, angry voice. “May the living stars give those criminals the fates they deserve. What will we do with the time that the Dancers and Invincible are giving us?”
“Save some lives, at least for now.” Geary gave orders, diverting scores of warships to collect and recover escape pods from the Alliance battleships, battle cruisers, cruisers, and destroyers that had been put out of action or destroyed. “As soon as we have recovered everyone, we’re going to rejoin Mistral and head for the outer reaches of the star system. Another jump point is going to appear eventually. We can’t use it, because we can’t leave any dark ships active to attack the Alliance. But Mistral can.”
Desjani gazed at him, then nodded somberly. “Mistral has to get back. You may have to order some of the Marines aboard Mistral to hold a gun to Commander Young’s head to get her to leave the rest of us, though.”
He had a momentary image of what the rest of her life would be like for Commander Young, ordered to leave the rest, forced to leave the rest, but doomed to be forever remembered as the only one who had left Unity Alternate, the only one whose ship had survived the desperate battle at Unity Alternate. Geary was appalled as he realized that he would be ordering Young to a living nightmare that many would consider a fate worse than death. He wondered how long she could live with that, how long she would live with that.
But he knew he would have to order her to do it.
Geary called Mistral. “Commander Young, the fleet will be repositioning to the vicinity of the orbital governmental facility. You have one hour and ten minutes from the time of this transmission before we get there. Be ready to leave the dock and accompany the fleet at that time. Do not, repeat do not, leave anyone aboard that facility.”
The formations of the First Fleet, already rendered somewhat ragged by the combat losses they had sustained, had dissolved into a mass of individual ships darting about to collect escape pods and rescue the occupants. He did not have to supervise that. The fleet’s automated systems had no trouble figuring out which ship was best positioned to pick up which escape pod, could track when a ship had recovered as many survivors as that ship could safely carry, and could recommend to each commanding officer what to do next.
“It’s ironic,” Geary said as he watched the process. “Our automated systems are making it possible to recover all of the survivors as quickly and efficiently as we can. A lot of men and women will owe their rescue to that. But other automated systems destroyed their ships in the first place and will kill those men and women later if they can.”
“It’s just a matter of whether you’re ordering what to do based on what the systems say, or if they’re ordering you what to do whether you like it or not,” Desjani said. “There isn’t anything complicated about that.”
“There shouldn’t be,” Geary agreed.
The survivor recovery completed, Geary ordered his ships back into their formations, leaving the discarded escape pods drifting in space, and directed every warship to head back toward the government facility.
The dark ships were still swooping down on Invincible. The immense alien superbattleship was moving slowly away from the pursuing dark ships, plodding along under the thrust of the rows of fleet tugs that provided only a fraction of the power that Invincible’s main propulsion units once employed.
Geary felt an odd sense of sorrow at the sight. Not the huge regret that the knowledge represented by the captured alien ship would be lost but sadness at watching the massive ship sacrifice itself to give the Alliance fleet a little time that might make all the difference in being able to destroy the last dark ship before the last Alliance ship. In its willingness to be destroyed for the sake of the human warships, the alien craft itself felt more human, more a living thing, than the dark ships with their AIs designed to mimic human thought processes.
The ship information graphics on the virtual display next to his command seat were filled with red and yellow markers indicating degrees of damage suffered by his warships, amidst too few greens that indicated ships without significant damage. The diversion provided by Invincible would buy a few hours, but what his fleet needed was six months in a major repair facility with a lot of docks.
The sort of facility, in fact, they had been forced to destroy here.
“We’ve got a little time,” Geary told Desjani. “I’m going to hold a senior officer conference.”
She ensured the privacy fields were activated, then Geary called his top officers, their images in their command seats on the bridges of their ships appearing around him. Captain Duellos. Captain Jane Geary. Captain Badaya. Captain Desjani in person. Captain Armus. The sight of those officers brought back with full force the fact that Captain Tulev should have been among them and was not.
Geary took a second to compose himself, to ensure his voice did not falter, before he spoke. “You all know the situation we are in. I would like to know your thoughts and your recommendations.”
Duellos replied in an uncharacteristically grave voice. “As was recently pointed out by a very fine officer who is no longer among us, we only have one option remaining. Fight to the last.”
“That’s right,” Badaya said. “To the last ship, to the last man or woman. Maybe we can’t wipe out the dark ships completely, but we can ensure that none of their battle cruisers and battleships survive this fight.”
“None of ours will either,” Armus said as if that were a matter not of sorrow but of inevitability. “But no one will be able to say we did not die with honor. No one will be able to accuse us of not doing our duty. We will be welcomed by our ancestors.”
“The last charge of the Gearys,” Jane said with the ghost of a smile. “I never thought I’d be part of Black Jack’s real last stand. It doesn’t feel as bad as I thought it would.”
“No one else has any other options to suggest?” Geary said.
Desjani shrugged. “We can’t wipe out the dark ships without paying a very high price. There are too many of them, they have too much firepower, they can maneuver better than we can, and the AIs runnin
g them aren’t your equal, but they are close enough to that given those other advantages the dark ships have.”
“It’s not like we could reposition through the hypernet gate, even if it weren’t blocked,” Badaya pointed out.
After being awakened from a century in survival sleep, it had taken Geary a while to understand why Badaya phrased it that way. After a century of war, with little hope of victory and in the face of ongoing awful losses, the Alliance fleet had clung fiercely to its pride, never talking about retreating but only about repositioning. The Alliance fleet might die fighting, it might “reposition” at other times, but it never “retreated.” Geary realized that that attitude, which these officers had all grown up with, made it easier for them to contemplate a last battle at this moment. As Desjani had reminded him, they had all expected to die long before this.
Duellos nodded in agreement with Badaya. “We can’t let the dark ships have access to the hypernet so they can carry out that Armageddon Option. They won’t leave as long as we’re still here fighting them, so we must stay and fight, even if we didn’t have to.”
“That’s true,” Geary said.
“Although,” Badaya added, “part of me wouldn’t mind leading these human-made monsters to Unity so they could carry out their Armageddon on those who created them.”
“A lot of innocent people would die as well,” Jane Geary said. “Otherwise, I’d agree with you.”
“All right,” Geary said. “We are going to undertake one detour.” He explained about his intentions with Mistral. “If the Marines have found the means to unblock the hypernet gate, we can send Mistral to safety using that, but I’m going to assume we’ll have to try to avoid action until a jump point appears that Mistral can use.”
“There are going to be a lot of unhappy people on Mistral,” Armus observed dourly.
“They have to do their duty, just as we are doing ours,” Desjani said.
“I’m not arguing that. I’m just glad I’m not the commanding officer of Mistral.”
“Thank you,” Geary said. “I am honored to have served with you, and with every man and woman in this fleet. Captain Geary, there is one more issue we should discuss alone.” The images of the other captains vanished, leaving Jane Geary watching him expectantly. She made no comment about Tanya also still being present, for which Geary was grateful. “When Admiral Bloch communicated with us, he claimed to know that your brother Michael was still alive and where he was. He offered to trade that knowledge for our rescuing him from his flagship.”
Jane Geary inhaled sharply, then laughed. “Admiral Bloch would say anything to try to save his life. He’s lying.”
“That’s what I thought,” Geary said. “In any event, it is impossible to get him off the dark battle cruiser that is his flagship. The best that Bloch can hope for is that we knock out but not destroy that dark ship, leaving him a chance to get off it. But we can’t limit our attacks, or risk the lives of our people, to try to save him.”
“I agree. Michael would not want such a deal made in his name.” She looked over at Tanya. “He would be happy to know that the family included a worthy new sister when we fought our last fight.”
“Thank you,” Tanya said.
Jane Geary saluted them both, then her image vanished as well.
Geary took a moment to compose himself, then called General Charban. “You’ll need to tell the Dancers what we’re going to do.” He explained the fleet’s plans, then gestured in the direction of the Dancers, who were once again tagging along close to the Alliance warships. “The Dancers are under no obligation to stay here and fight to the death with us, though we will be immensely grateful for their assistance. Let me know what they are planning on doing.”
“Yes, Admiral. What are our chances, do you think?”
“I think our fleet will achieve its objectives, General. I don’t expect to survive that. I don’t think many of us will. Maybe none.”
“That’s what I thought.” Charban shrugged. “At least I can stop worrying about why I survived earlier battles when others did not. This will simplify my life though, of course, I will no longer be alive to benefit from that. We’ll see how the Dancers feel about this kind of fight.”
That done, Geary looked over at Tanya. “Regrets?”
“I’m doing what I love, Admiral.” She looked at him, then smiled. “And in good company.”
“Me, too.”
—
“I need more time, Admiral,” Rione’s image insisted with a fierce intensity unlike her usual cool outward demeanor. “I think I can find what we need. But I require more time than you are allowing. I must have that time.”
They were still a couple of light-minutes from the government facility. The four-minute delays between each statement and the reply being received made the conversation awkward but not intolerable. “I can’t give you more time,” Geary said. “If you haven’t found anything yet, odds are there is nothing to find. Maybe Admiral Bloch has the codes and hasn’t coughed them up. You can try to convince him to do that. The dark ship battle cruiser he is on has survived so far, and despite his talk about risking a shuttle journey to join our fleet, Bloch didn’t make any moves to do that during any of our engagements so far.
“It would be good to have access to that gate so we could get Mistral out of here fast, but it’s not critical that we use the hypernet gate. It is critical that Mistral take advantage of the opportunity to get back within the protection of our warships while the dark ships are preoccupied with destroying Invincible. The bottom line is that Mistral needs to pull out when I ordered so that we have a chance to get her out of this star system. And you and your husband need to be on Mistral.”
Rione did not reply. He imagined she was angry, but he had no emotional stress left unused to devote to worrying about that.
—
ABOUT an hour later, the Alliance formations swung by the government facility. The dark ships had surely reached Invincible by now, but the light from their attack had not yet traveled all the way from that location to where Geary’s fleet could see it. The Alliance sensors could only see images nearly an hour old of the dark ships closing in on the alien superbattleship. Odds were that the dark ships had actually finished their attacks on Invincible and were already on their way back to deal with Geary’s forces again.
Mistral shot out of the dock, accelerating as rapidly as she could to rejoin the other warships. “Mission completed as ordered,” Commander Young’s image told Geary.
Next to her, Colonel Rico nodded. He looked like someone who had been wearing battle armor for hours and was, in fact, still in it, just his face shield opened. “We have multiple copies of everything in every record file in every storage source aboard that facility, Admiral. There were also papers.”
“Papers?” Geary asked. “What kind of papers?”
“Papers with records on them, and orders, and information,” Rico clarified.
“Really? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that.”
“My hack and cracks think the paper records were used instead of digital files to limit any chance of the information being copied or leaked,” Rico explained. “We discovered something else about their security precautions when we looked outside the facility using the sensors on it. They showed us a star system with only one star, Alpha. Beta was completely screened out, gravitational effects and everything. I bet it was the same way on any ships bringing in people and taking them back. Probably only a few people out of everyone sent here ever knew it was a binary.”
“Clever,” Geary said.
“Yes, sir,” Commander Young agreed. “Some people have gotten entirely too comfortable with the idea of making everyone else see only what is wanted.”
“We brought the private security guards out,” Rico added, “including the body of the one we had to shoot. The guards are prisone
rs, but they’re not giving us any trouble. They figure we saved them. We’ve also locked up the people who were prisoners aboard the facility. We don’t know why they had been locked up, so we’re not taking chances.”
“That can be sorted out later. What about the suits?” Geary asked.
“Locked in the highest-security cells on Mistral,” Commander Young answered. “The Marines, my masters-at-arms, and our medical personnel gave all of the suits a good going-over before we locked them up to ensure no one had suicide capability on them or in them. I don’t know if all of them are a threat, either. Some of the suits are acting like people who were asking themselves questions even before we showed up.”
“What about codes for the hypernet gate?” Geary said. He already knew what the answer must be because no one had led with that information, but still asked in a sort of forlorn hope.
“No, sir. We didn’t find them. Former Senator Rione thought she had a lead, but there wasn’t any more time.”
“Where is Rione?”
Commander Young checked a display on her ship. “In her stateroom, with her husband. He’s in really bad shape, Admiral. I think that hit her real hard. She’s got a comm block on the stateroom, but I can override it if you need to talk to her.”
“No,” Geary said. “If she had found anything, she would have already told me.”
He had considered having Mistral join Gamma One, positioned near Dauntless, but realized that putting two high-value targets right next to each other would be tempting fate, or at least tempting the dark ships. Instead, Geary ordered Mistral to join with Gamma Three, taking up position near Dreadnaught.
“Admiral, we have our answer from the Dancers,” Charban said. “It’s an odd little song to human ears, but it comes down to a statement that they were sent to stop the dark ships, and they will stay and fight to complete that mission.”
“Thank them for me,” Geary said. “Can we tell the Dancers that we are honored to fight alongside them?”