Invincible

SIX

This was one of those times when the huge distances in space could only feed frustration. With one force of unknown aliens before them, and another force of too-well-known and hostile aliens behind them, Geary wanted to do something. Anything. But he could only wait, not knowing how the unknown aliens would react to the appearance of the human fleet and aware that anything he did might be misinterpreted by the unknown aliens. Meanwhile, the bear-cow armada had begun accelerating again, slowly overhauling the human fleet. At least there the distances involved were helping Geary. Even if the bear-cows took their velocity up past point two light speed, it would take them hours to catch the humans.

“Captain, we’ve got something coming in from ahead,” the communications watch announced. “Broadcast signal repeating across a wide band of frequencies.”

Rione laughed with sudden relief. “They want to talk to us.”

“Maybe just to tell us they’re going to kill us,” Desjani muttered. “Is it just audio or also video?” she asked her comm watch.

“Definitely video, Captain. It roughly resembles one of the old formats used by humans, so we can convert the signal into something we can view as soon as the system generates the right conversion protocol. The image might get jerky at times, but it should be clear, and audio should be fine.”

“Give us a look as soon as you can,” Desjani ordered.

“It should be less than a minute, Captain.”

In fact, it only took a couple more seconds before virtual windows popped into existence beside Geary and others on the bridge, a sharp image visible in them. He gaped at what he saw, only gradually realizing that the entire bridge had gone silent.

“How big is that thing?” Desjani finally asked in a choked voice. “Lieutenant Yuon?”

“We… we can’t tell, Captain,” Yuon stuttered. “There’s nothing to scale it against.”

Geary forced himself to look closely at the image. If a very large spider had somehow mated with a wolf, the result might have been something like that. At least six appendages that might work equally well as arms or legs, a skin that appeared shiny and hard yet also sprouted patches of hair or fur, a head adorned with six eyes spread across the center, a flap above the eyes that might be for breathing, and beneath the eyes, a multijawed bear trap of a mouth. Two flaps on either side of the head made up of very thin skin rippled with veins might represent ears.

It was as if someone had searched for all of the most horrible-looking elements of living creatures and combined them into one.

“At least it doesn’t have tentacles,” Charban said.

Geary’s gaze slid away from the hideous appearance to focus on the clothing the creature wore. Brilliantly colored bands of cloth that shone like silk were woven about the body in an intricate pattern, the colors never clashing as they wound about each other. Odd, yet beautiful in its own way.

The creature was speaking, a high-pitched, wavering sound, as it spread out four limbs to their full extent on either side of its body. Impressive claws tipping the ends of the limbs also spread out, the creature holding the pose as it kept talking, the sounds occasionally interspersed with clacking as jaws struck together.

“Ancestors preserve us,” Desjani whispered, then swallowed and spoke in a nearly normal voice. “Is it threatening us?”

“I have no idea,” Geary said.

“Something that looks like that made ships and formations that look like that.”

“Yeah.” He looked down, breathing deeply to regain his composure. “Forward this to the civilian experts and see what they think it is doing.”

Rione finally spoke up, her voice the closest to normal of all those on the bridge. “It is talking to us. Whatever they are, they initiated contact. The enigmas have only spoken to us after a long period of hiding, and even then, very reluctantly. The bear-cows have never exchanged any communication with us.”

“Maybe it’s just asking us how we taste,” Desjani muttered, then laughed. “I wonder how you say ‘tastes like chicken’ in their language?”

Geary found himself laughing, too, the dark humor a welcome release from the shock of seeing the creature.

“Captain?” The communications watch had managed to control his own half-hysterical laughter at Desjani’s joke. “There’s something attached to this communication. A program of some kind.”

Desjani gave Geary a bitter glance. “A Trojan horse or a virus or what?” she asked the watch-stander.

“It doesn’t seem to be any of those things, Captain. It’s not concealed in any way. The attachment is very obvious. Either these, um… whatevers are incredibly unsophisticated about computer security issues, or they wanted to be sure we spotted that program.”

“Run it by security,” Desjani ordered. “I want our code people to analyze it and give me their assessment before we do anything with it. Wait a minute. That message could have been picked up by every ship in the fleet.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Without taking his eyes off the alien message, Geary hit his comm controls. “All units are to refrain from recording, running, or otherwise activating the software attached to the alien message. It will only be tested and activated under controlled conditions and as authorized by me.”

In the comm window before Geary, the creature had ended its speech. Its four upper limbs folded back against its body, crossing over in front of it, then two rose again just enough to frame its head before the message ended.

“Now what?” Desjani asked.

“I don’t know,” Geary said. “Maybe it’s easier to decide what to do when they don’t talk to us.”

“We’ve got the bear-cows on our tails. We can’t just hang around waiting to figure out what these… spider-wolves want or need or whatever.”

“You should send a reply,” Rione said.

“A reply?” Geary questioned. “To what? I don’t know what that thing just said.” The idea of sending a message in the blind had made sense a couple of hours ago. But now, after viewing the spider-wolves’ message, the gap between him and the creatures in those beautiful ships seemed vaster than the distances between stars. “They won’t know what my gestures mean, they won’t understand my words, and I may look as ugly to them as they do to me.”

“Nonetheless, you should reply,” Rione insisted. “Let them know we want to talk. Perhaps they know something about humans. They are neighbors of a sort to the enigmas.”

Geary gave Rione a cross look. “I smiled at the bear-cows, and by showing my incisors seemed to them to be preparing to eat them.”

“That is only a guess, Admiral,” she reminded him. “A good guess, I admit. But I heard you earlier speaking of engineering issues, which apply also to living creatures. An attack posture is different from a defense posture, isn’t it? Doesn’t it have to be?”

Charban answered her. “It depends. There are a number of combat methods in which an individual balances, ready to attack or defend as necessary. However, those are fairly sophisticated as such things go.” He paused, his expression thoughtful. “In human terms, we would indicate aggression by leaning forward, arms close to the body, ready to strike. Defense might look the same. But projecting peaceful intent is done by humans by standing erect, arms spread out, hands open. That posture does not suit either attack or defense.”

“The way the, uh, spider-wolf stood,” Geary agreed. “Arms out, claws open.”

“Ready to grab us,” Desjani said. “How do they do fine motor manipulation with claws, anyway?”

“Another good question.” Geary scowled, knowing that Rione was right but wondering if he could talk openly and calmly when he now knew what his audience looked like. “Can we send a reply in the same format in which we received that one?”

“Of course Dauntless can do that,” Desjani replied, looking offended by the suggestion that her ship might not be able to do something.

“We can use the same conversion program, Admiral,” the comm watch explained. “Only instead of converting their stuff to our format, we’ll do it backwards and convert our format to theirs.”

He nodded but sat silently, trying to get himself in the right state of mind to speak to those things without showing revulsion.

Charban spoke, his voice meditative. “You can partly judge someone by what they do, by what they create, and by what they surround themselves with. We did that with the bear-cows, looking at what they had done with their world and deciding from that they must be ruthless. Here we can’t see the home world of these new creatures, but we can see what they created. We can see how they like to do things. That offers us some grounds for empathy.”

“Empathy.” Geary heard his skepticism clearly in this single word.

“Yes. Just as you could see aspects of humans in what we create and how we do things.” Charban waved around. “We made this fleet. A mighty instrument of war. That tells you something about us, but it doesn’t stop with the obvious. Not everything in this fleet reflects pure science or physics or engineering. Many things reflect how we want things to be done because that is how we like them. Not because they’re most efficient but because we like doing things that way. It matters to us, though we might not be able to say why.”

“The Golden Mean,” Rione said. “It’s a ratio between numbers. Human use it in many things because we like seeing things with that proportion.”

“A ratio?” Geary asked.

“It’s an irrational mathematical constant,” Lieutenant Castries reported, squinting at the results of the query she had run. “Derived from the ratio of a larger quantity to a smaller one. It’s about one to one point six. Found in architecture, sculpture, the proportions of hard-copy books, paper, playing cards, music, and virtual windows among other things.”

“Exactly.” Rione gestured toward her display. “These displays probably default to such a ratio of sides because we like seeing things in those proportions. It is somehow part of us. Now look upon these creatures and what they have created. Somewhere within them is beauty.”

“Somewhere very deep within them perhaps,” Geary said.

“Look upon their works, think about those works, as you speak to them.”

“Or maybe get drunk first,” Desjani suggested. “That always makes ugly easier to accept.”

“I won’t ask how you know that,” Geary replied. He sighed, then stood up, trying to maintain a nonaggressive stance. But then he stopped. “Images. We can try imagery. How do I get my display to show along with me?”

“We want to show them one of our displays?” Desjani questioned.

“Yes.”

“Wait, Admiral,” the comm watch said, his hands flying over controls. “All right. It’s visible beside you if you transmit. Here’s a secondary window that shows what you look like.”

The secondary window popped up, so that Geary could see himself standing next to a display image. He considered how to do things, then tapped his comm controls. “Thank you for communicating with us. We want to pass through this star system peacefully.” He pointed to the jump exit they had arrived at, then swung his finger to point to one of the jump points on the other side of this star system. “There are enemies who have pursued us.” Now he held out an open palm in a shielding gesture against the representation of the bear-cow armada, his other hand poised to strike. “We will not fight you.” Now he dropped both hands as he faced the representation of the spider-wolf alien force, his palms outward and empty. “To the honor of our ancestors, this is Admiral Geary, out.”

“Captain?” Desjani looked over as the image of a lieutenant commander appeared before her. Geary recognized him as Dauntless’s systems security officer. “We isolated the attachment to that alien message and ran it on a physically quarantined system so there was no way it could infect anything. It took a fair amount of work, but we figured out how to run it since it contained its own operating system that seemed to adapt to our hardware.”

“It adapted to our hardware?”

“Yes, Captain, but don’t worry. It can’t get to any other systems. There’s no physical or electronic connection, and the unit is in an isolation box.”

Desjani took a deep breath. “What is it?” she asked.

“I think…” The systems security officer scratched his head. “It’s got pictures, and some kind of interactive routine. It kind of reminded me of a kid’s book. You know, something for real young kids to teach words and stuff.”

“Words?” Charban cried. “A pictorial means of establishing communication!”

“Yes, sir,” the systems security officer agreed. “That’s what it feels like to me.”

“Keep it quarantined for now,” Desjani ordered, “and—”

“We need access to that,” Charban insisted.

“This is my ship, and I decide what gets access to its systems.”

“Captain Desjani,” Geary said formally, “I agree it should be quarantined, kept isolated, but we need to get access to it as soon as possible for both General Charban and Emissary Rione as well as the civilian experts.”

“We can put together a quarantined network,” the systems security officer suggested. “It will take some work, and they’ll have to access it in one compartment because we’ll run short, physical connections between the workstations, but that way they can all play with it at the same time.”

“Use one of the big conference rooms,” Desjani ordered. “Assume a dozen users at one time. How long until it’s up?”

“Half an hour, Captain.”

“Do it, and make sure if you need more time to do it right you ask for it. I don’t want that software having any access to the rest of the systems.”

The lieutenant commander nodded. “Yes, Captain. I don’t want something like that loose, either. If we can figure out how it adapted to our hardware, we’ll get some really cool ideas from it, though.”

Desjani twisted her mouth as she watched her security officer. “Their software does things our software can’t?”

“Yes, Captain.” The lieutenant commander grinned with almost childlike enthusiasm. “We don’t know how yet, but it was amazing to watch. The software is really… cool.”

“Thank you. Get on that network,” Desjani said. After the image of the systems security officer vanished, she looked at Geary. “Some software that makes my code monkeys drool with delight, and those things just gave it to us.”

“Maybe they don’t think it’s anything special,” Geary suggested.

“Maybe not, but if that’s so, I’d hate to see their special software.” Desjani turned to Charban. “General, you’ll have access to that program as soon as I get that isolated network safely set up.”

Geary faced Charban and Rione. “They must intend for us to use that program to develop a means of communication. Here’s what I most need to be able to communicate to them. I need them to know we don’t want to fight them. Can we transit their territory in peace? I need to know their attitude toward the bear-cows. Are they enemies? Neutral? Or allies? Will they stand by if we engage the bear-cow armada, or will they take an active role?”

Charban nodded, his eyes intent. “Those will be our priorities. But aside from the time we must spend learning how to ask those things, there is the time involved in exchanging messages. We are still more than fifty light-minutes from the spider-wolf ships.”

“I know we need time.” Geary tapped another control. “All units, accelerate to point one five light speed at time five zero.” That would buy some more hours before the bear-cows caught up, more hours to find out what the spider-wolves intended.

“How the hell are we going to take those things down?” Desjani wondered, looking at her display, where the bear-cow superbattleships were thundering in the wake of the human fleet.

“Has anyone here not seen the images sent to us by the beings in the ships ahead of us?” Geary asked, looking around the conference table. Since the message had been broadcast to the fleet, he expected that everyone had seen them.

The expressions on his ship captains answered the question without words.

“We still don’t know what the intent of the spider-wolves is,” Geary said. “Our experts and our emissaries are working to establish meaningful communications, but, at best, such communications will be primitive and very limited for some time.”

“Are they going to aid the Kicks?” Captain Badaya demanded. “That’s what we need to know.”

“The Kicks?” Geary looked around, seeing some of the officers nodding in recognition of the term and others looking as puzzled as he felt.

“It’s a term the sailors came up with,” Captain Duellos explained. “They started calling the bear-cows Killer Cows or Crazy Cows, which got condensed to KCs and CCs, which are both pronounced as Kicks.”

“Works for me,” Desjani muttered.

Geary couldn’t really object to either name when it came to the bear-cows, and Kicks wasn’t either obscene or a word that sounded like it might be obscene, so the term would work for him as well. But the byplay had distracted him. Geary took a second to recall Badaya’s question, then activated a copy of the latest message received from the spider-wolves so that it played before everyone present, virtually or in person. The animation of spider-wolf ships attacking bear-cow ships could not be mistaken. “It looks like they are enemies. Watch the next scene.”

Now the animation shifted, incorporating pasted-in images of human warships in this fleet. The animated human warships and the spider-wolf ships moved together, jointly firing on bear-cow combatants, which exploded in some nicely done computer graphics.

“They want to ally with us?” Captain Duellos said. “The ugliest creatures in the universe, and they want to be friends.”

Captain Bradamont, who rarely spoke in these meetings, did so now. “As the admiral mentioned earlier, they’re probably thinking the same thing about us.”

Laughter erupted, born as much from release of tension as from the humor of the statement.

“If they think we’re ugly,” Captain Badaya added, “wait until they see some of the Marines!”

More laughter, accompanied by looks at General Carabali, who waved away the comment. “It’s a well-known fact that when we hit planet-side, the Marines get all the available girls and boys while the fleet officers and sailors are left standing around alone.”

“Taking the local populace prisoner is not a measure of social success by most definitions,” Duellos observed.

Geary quieted the next burst of laughter. The relief that had given rise to the light mood could easily shift quickly to renewed realization that they faced a serious challenge here. “The important thing is, we have allies. Unfortunately, there’s no way to coordinate our attacks. We’ll have to operate independently, attacking the bear-cows while also avoiding interfering with the spider-wolves.”

“And keeping an eye on the spider-wolves?” Tulev asked. “We have only their word that they are enemies of the bear-cows.”

“We’ll keep a close eye on our new allies and best friends forever,” Desjani confirmed.

Geary hesitated as he saw how everyone accepted what Desjani said as a definitive answer, just as if he had given it. Were they accepting that she had already consulted with him on that subject, or did they assume that she could call the shots not only on the bridge of Dauntless but also in her professional relationship with him? “Yes,” he finally said, hoping that didn’t sound like a weak agreement. “We’ll take nothing for granted.”

He brought up the display showing this star system. Ahead loomed the spider-wolf formation, smoothly perfect ships in gorgeous intertwining loops, now only ten light-minutes away. “We’re still in the middle, but not for long.” Behind, the bear-cow armada had stabilized into an oblong that bore a disquieting resemblance to the head of a sledgehammer, especially since the face of the formation closest to the human fleet included the superbattleships. Since Geary had held the velocity of the human fleet to point one five light speed, the bear-cows had been steadily getting closer and now were less than two light-minutes behind the human fleet.

On the display, the human formation of interlinked triangles finally broke, individual ships streaming off on different vectors that gradually coalesced into three subformations of roughly equal size, each heading in a different direction. “We’ve been giving the bear-cows a single target to charge at. Now we’re going to make them choose, and whichever one they choose, the other two subformations will be able to hit them while the targeted subformation evades.”

“Or if those spider-wolves are indeed the enemies of the bear-cows,” Duellos said, eyeing the display, “then when we pull away in different directions, the bear-cows may simply keep charging straight ahead at the spider-wolves. I’m not certain I would be pleased about that if I were the spider-wolves.”

Geary paused again. He hadn’t considered that, thinking that the bear-cows would continue their single-minded pursuit of the humans. But with the spider-wolves right in front of them, the bear-cows might shift targets.

He looked down and over at Desjani, who had helped develop the plan and was unsuccessfully trying to look like she was surprised by Duellos’s suggestion. Tanya, you obviously figured out that might happen and didn’t tell me. We’re going to have words about that.

Badaya was frowning mightily as he thought. “If that happens, if the Kicks go straight for the spiders, it will be an excellent opportunity for us to observe whether or not these two sets of aliens are indeed enemies and how the spider creatures engage their foes in space combat. That’s a clever approach, Admiral.”

“Thank you,” Geary said, not looking at Desjani. “We’ll have to see what happens, but we’ll be able to react appropriately no matter what the bear-cows do and remain clear of the spider-wolf formation just in case they’re not as friendly as they say.”

Commander Neeson hunched forward. “My systems security officer briefed me on the spider-wolf program we received. Our software specialists are geeking out over it.”

“I understand it has capabilities beyond anything human software can do,” Geary said.

“Is the rest of the spider-wolf technology superior to ours? My engineers are also enraptured by what they’ve seen of the spider-wolf ships.”

Geary gave the only answer he could. “We’ll find out. Right now, with the spider-wolf flotilla not changing its vector, we can’t tell what their maneuvering capabilities are like. Their shield strength seems to match ours, but we don’t know if they’re at full strength or dialed back since their ships are not in action at this time.”

Captain Smythe spoke up. “My specialists analyzed what could be seen of the spider-wolf equipment in the videos they have sent us. About the only conclusion they were willing to reach was that the bridge appears to be truly three-dimensional in its layout.”

“Three-dimensional?” Tulev questioned.

“There doesn’t seem to be a deck,” Smythe explained, “a single surface that everything is arranged around. Instead, the arrangement of equipment seems to reflect no up-and-down bias. It’s just wherever it best fits.”

“They couldn’t have evolved in zero g,” someone protested.

“No, but however they evolved, they didn’t think in terms of ‘this has to be down and this has to be up.’”

“Have you passed that analysis on to the civilian experts?” Geary asked Smythe.

“Um…”

“Please do so as soon as this meeting is over.” He took a moment to be certain he hadn’t forgotten anything. “We know from our encounter at Pandora that the bear-cow superbattleships are extremely tough. Instead of focusing on them, our combat systems will be told to prioritize concentrating fire against the smaller warships accompanying the superbattleships. We’ll peel away those escorts, destroy all of them if necessary, and once the superbattleships are stripped of support, we’ll go after them one by one.”

“What if they run?” Captain Jane Geary asked.

“Then we wave ’bye and watch them go back to the jump exit.” He wasn’t sure how that answer would be taken, not in this fleet, which had long ago fallen back on a single-minded emphasis on attack to replace the tactical expertise wiped out by bloody losses in decade after decade. “If they run, we’ve won. Pursuing a bigger victory would surely cost more lives in this fleet, and I believe that we’ve lost enough humans already at the hands of the bear-cows.”

“We need to teach the Kicks a lesson,” Jane Geary insisted. “Now is the perfect time and place to do that.”

“We need to get home,” Captain Hiyen grumbled in response. “The ships of the Callas Republic are part of this fleet for the purpose of defending our homes. Turning back the Kicks with a bloody nose so they can’t follow us and have no idea where our homes are accomplishes that.”

“The Alliance fleet,” the commander of the heavy cruiser Barding began, “does not turn from battle and does not settle for less than complete victory.”

“Speak for yourself,” the captain of Sapphire replied. “That’s Black Jack, remember? If he says a victory satisfies honor, then I won’t question him. How can any of us?”

“Even Black Jack was just a man,” Jane Geary said, in the manner of someone who had made that kind of statement many times before. From what Geary had learned of her, his grandniece had spent her life resenting the Black Jack legend, which had constrained her and her brother Michael, forcing them into the fleet in the footsteps of their legendary great-uncle. “We do neither ourselves nor our fleet commander any credit by not raising appropriate questions—”

“This is not a debate.” Geary didn’t realize that he had said that, in tones that sliced across the conversation, until after every face turned toward him. “I am in command. This is the plan we will follow. Are there any other questions?”

There weren’t. As the officers vanished around him, leaving only Tanya Desjani still with him, Geary struggled to get his temper under control.

“I tried talking to her earlier,” Desjani said. “She was polite enough to me but no more than that. I made some joke about being part of the family now, and the temperature around her seemed to drop close to absolute zero.”

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“I think I’m beginning to.” Tanya stood up, her lips pressed tightly together. “She hated being a Geary, all her life she hated having to live in your shadow—”

“It was never my shadow!”

“All right. Black Jack’s shadow. The point is, she might have hated it, but it was her. She was a Geary. Everyone looked at her as being part of that, even if she didn’t like it. Now…” Tanya shrugged. “Now you’re back. You’re Black Jack himself, and don’t bother interrupting again to deny it, and you suck all of the oxygen out of her world just by being here. She’s just Jane now. And I’m your partner. Chosen to be with you. Where does that leave her?”

Geary stood silently for a while. “Trying to be something.”

“Yeah. Because she thinks everything she was is gone. Something has to replace that. She changed after she went back to your home world, remember? What do you think people said there? In how many ways was she forced to measure herself against not a legend but against a real person? Now she’s going to prove she’s a Geary.”

He stared toward the bulkhead before him, seeing not the surface there but images of other captains who had sought glory. Captain Midea charging Paladin to destruction at Lakota. Captain Falco, leading Triumph, Polaris, and Vanguard to their deaths at Vidha. Captain Kila, cold-bloodedly arranging the destruction of Lorica at Padronis, while also trying to cause the loss of Dauntless with all hands.

Those officers had thought themselves heroic, and ships and crews had paid the price.

There was a way to prevent that.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Tanya said.

He focused on her. “What wouldn’t be a good idea?”

“Relieving her of command.”

“How did you—?”

She leaned in, one forefinger to his chest. “I know who you’re thinking of. You think she’s like Midea? I knew Midea a lot longer than you did. Jane Geary isn’t close to that. She’s been a bit reckless, she’s pushed for more action, but she hasn’t been stupid.”

“What about Falco?”

“Falco? Falco was epically stupid, and he thought nothing of spending ships and the lives of crews in the pursuit of his victories.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “You’re thinking of someone else.”

“You really are reading my mind, aren’t you?” At the moment, it didn’t seem a strange thing to believe at all.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Who’s the other one you’re thinking of?”

“Kila.”

Desjani glared at him silently for several seconds. “No one deserves to be compared to that murderous bitch, especially not your own grandniece. Keep this in mind, Admiral. I am death on incompetent officers. You know that. Jane Geary isn’t incompetent. She’s smart, but she needs a firm, guiding hand right now. You are her leader. Lead her.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s not funny, Admiral. Now let’s go teach some Kicks not to mess with the Alliance fleet.”

“That reminds me.” Desjani paused to look back at him as Geary frowned at her. “Why didn’t you bring up to me the possibility that the bear-cows would aim at the spider-wolves when we split our fleet?”

“Because you already knew! I knew that you wouldn’t want to admit knowing that could happen, but you know I know my job well enough to spot that, and I know you know enough about tactics to spot that as quickly as I did.”

It took him a moment to work his way through her statement. “Tanya, I hadn’t seen that before it was pointed out.”

“Seriously?” She stared at him, then shrugged. “Sorry, Admiral. You’re good at tactics. You know that. I assume you know things that look obvious and, in this case, were just being diplomatic to avoid saying, ‘Better those ugly suckers than us.’”

“You need to point out things like that to me rather than assume I already know them.”

“So you can say, ‘I know all that’?” Desjani demanded.

“I’ve said that once.”

“I respectfully beg to differ, sir.”

“I— Tanya, why the hell can you sometimes read my mind and other times not have a clue as to what I’m thinking?”

“I knew you were going to say that! No, I can’t ever read your mind. Can we go fight the battle now?”

“Yes.” Unlike this argument, at least he would have a chance of winning the battle.

He took his seat on the bridge of Dauntless, trying to put out of his mind everything except the coming battle. We’ll peel away those escorts, destroy all of them if necessary, and once the superbattleships are stripped of support, we’ll go after them. It sounded very easy. Actually doing it was going to be hard as hell.

But his attempt to concentrate was interrupted by a blip from his comm unit indicating that someone was trying to call. At least that was working right now.

No. It wasn’t working right. The incoming call was from Captain Vente, who had apparently finally realized that he had been completely sidelined since the loss of Invincible. But a call from Vente should have been automatically blocked.

Should he tell Tanya? She didn’t need distractions, either.

But if Dauntless’s comm system was acting up again, she needed to know, and he needed it fixed. “Captain Desjani, my comm settings aren’t being honored by the system.”

Her expression hardened. “Communications. The Admiral’s comms are not working properly. You have fifteen minutes to get everything functional, or this ship will have a new comm officer.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Geary made another effort to get his mind into battle readiness, only to have an alert flash red on his display. Before he could acknowledge it, the image of Spartan’s commanding officer appeared before him. “Admiral, half of my ship just went dark. Preliminary estimate is several power junctions failing nearly instantaneously.”

Damn. Damn. Damn. “Do you still have maneuvering and propulsion?”

“Yes, sir, we have propulsion. We’re jury-rigging maneuvering circuits to get around the problem on the port side and should have adequate capability within five minutes.”

It could be worse. It could be far worse. “How about replacing the power junctions?” Geary asked.

“We only have enough onboard spares to get five of the seven junctions that failed replaced.” Spartan’s captain looked grim. “I am ensuring all records are sealed and damage sites maintained except for necessary repair work. If this was sabotage or negligence, we will identify how it was done.”

“Thank you,” Geary said. “Good thinking. There’s a strong chance, unfortunately, that it was just equipment failure. Were you putting extra stress on your ship’s power systems before the loss of power?”

“Extra? Just preparations for action, sir. Running shields up to full power for a readiness check and powering up hell-lance batteries.”

Would he lose partial or full capability on other ships as they prepared for this engagement? “Let me know when you have full maneuvering capability again.” As the image of Spartan’s captain vanished, Geary called the fleet. “All units, ensure when preparing for action that you power up systems sequentially rather than simultaneously so as to avoid putting extra strain on power junctions.”

Captain Smythe was already calling in. “Admiral, preliminary analysis shows that the power junctions on Spartan failed one by one very rapidly. After the first went, the power distribution system automatically tried to route all power through the remaining ones. That overloaded another, there was another attempt to redistribute power, which sent even more power through the remaining junctions, one of those failed, and so on. One of the watch-standers in engineering on Spartan activated the manual override in time to keep the automated systems from blowing every junction on the ship.”

Far from being able to relax himself, Geary now had an impressive headache developing. “I thought there were automated safeguards against that kind of thing.”

“There are, but the power junctions aren’t the only systems deteriorating, Admiral. In this case, the automated safeguards didn’t kick in. It may take some time to figure out why, but I’ve already sent emergency engineering notices to all ships so they can be alert for that happening to them.”

Another alert appeared. Smythe must have seen it on his display, too, as he looked to one side with a startled expression. “Titan just lost a main propulsion unit. Cause unknown.”

Battle was looming, he hadn’t even gone into action yet, and already his ships were taking damage. Titan was sluggish under the best of circumstances. Without one of her main propulsion units… “Captain Smythe, I need that propulsion unit online and working again within the next twenty minutes.”

“I don’t even know what’s wrong with it yet, Admiral! Let alone what repairs will be required!”

“Whatever it is and whatever it takes, you have twenty minutes.”

“Very well, Admiral. But it has been months since I warned you of this problem developing. Be aware that as our ships boost power to systems and run tests in preparation for an engagement, we may see a sudden surge in similar failures popping up all over the place.”

Smythe had barely signed off before his words proved prophetic. More alerts rippled across Geary’s display. Dependable, ironically enough, reporting a sudden degradation of its combat systems during pre-engagement testing. Dragon and Victorious each reporting the loss of a hell-lance battery due to power-system failures. Witch losing partial shields capability. More hell-lance power failures on heavy cruisers Parapet, Chanfron, Diamond, and Ravelin, light cruisers Assault, Forte, and Retiarii, and destroyers Herebra, Cutlass, Stave, Rifle, and Flail. Another shield problem, this time on the light cruiser Rocket.

Geary sat back, his eyes on the bear-cow armada closing in and now barely one light-minute behind the Alliance fleet. A complicated battle had just become even more complicated.