Jack Campbell - Dreadnaught

“That doesn’t always work with humans. Beat them up, and they just come back for more.”

“Yes. That’s one of our particularly irrational forms of dealing with reality. But these are the enigmas. Their overriding goal doesn’t seem to be survival or victory. It’s keeping their secrets. Demonstrate that military force cannot succeed in that, and it may make a difference.”

Geary looked at the display over the table in his stateroom, bringing up an image of the previous star system as they had last seen it, with one hundred and ten enigma warships pursuing the Alliance force. “We may have to fight again and destroy as many of those enigma warships as possible.”

“Yes.” Charban nodded to Geary. “You see that as a sad necessity, as do I. Victoria said you would.”

“Has Victoria Rione said anything else?”

Charban frowned. “No. She just told me to talk to you. Admiral, I’m fully aware that I am far from the most qualified person to have been given this assignment. I have sometimes wondered why I was given it, whether—”

“We were being set up to fail?”

“I haven’t gone that far in my suspicions, Admiral. Some of the people I have worked with would not have done such a thing.”

“But others might?” He thought of Rione’s vague warning. Many minds trying to direct a single, clumsy hand.

“Do you trust my fellow emissary, Admiral?” Charban asked.

“Yes.” But I’ve made mistakes before. Hopefully not this time. “I’m glad that you told me about this idea, General. We can’t consult with the civilian experts until we leave jump, but please talk with them once we arrive at the next star system and work up a way of presenting that proposal to the enigmas.”

Maybe there was yet hope.

The last thing that anyone wanted to hear when a ship exited from jump space was the frantic blare of alarms as combat and maneuvering systems screamed warnings before humans could focus their senses. Geary braced himself as Dauntless rolled upward and to the side in the preplanned evasive movement, trying to overcome the stresses of the motion and the confusion that came with the exit from the jump space.

“Son of a bitch!” Desjani gasped, having centered her attention a fraction of a second earlier than Geary had managed.

He still took another moment to grasp what he was seeing. “What the hell is that?”

Across the path the fleet would have taken straight out the jump point and only one light minute distant, a massive object orbited. The fleet’s combat systems had already covered what seemed like every square meter of the object’s surface with threat symbols, which continued to multiply as new threats were identified. Geary blinked, rereading the assessment of shield strength on the orbiting leviathan in disbelief.

One of the watch-standers answered Geary’s question, her own voice filled with incredulity. “It’s the size and mass of a minor planet, Admiral, and its orbit is slaved to the jump point. Either they completely turned a minor planet into a fortress and moved it here, or they built something that huge.”

Desjani shook her head. “If we hadn’t executed that preplanned evasion the fleet would have gotten far too close to that thing before we could turn it. Good thing—”

She stopped speaking as more alarms shrieked from the combat systems.

Geary stared as part of the surface of the planet-fort seemed to leap into space, then saw that it was actually a dense swarm of small ships so numerous they momentarily blocked a clean view of the fortress. “How many of those things are there?”

No answer came, and Desjani spun in her seat to glare at her combat systems watch-stander. Lieutenant Castries shook her head helplessly. “System is still evaluating. Estimate greater than two hundred. Greater than four hundred. Greater than eight hundred.” Castries took a sudden breath. “Working estimate stabilizing at nine hundred, plus or minus ten percent.”

Desjani also inhaled slowly, then looked at Geary. “Nine hundred,” she repeated in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Plus or minus ten percent,” he added, wondering that he could make a joke of such a thing. “Any idea what they are?”

“If they’re missiles, they’re very big missiles.” Desjani tapped her display. “They have very good acceleration. I wonder if they’re crewed or automated.”

“They’re about twice as large in mass and dimensions than standard human fast attack craft,” the combat systems watch reported. “That’s plenty big enough for crews”

“Or really big warheads.” Desjani pointed at her display again. “They could be mostly warhead and propulsion. If they maintain that acceleration—”

“We won’t be able to outrun them,” Geary agreed, running another estimate on the maneuvering systems. The same answer came up, though. “Not when they’re this close and coming on that fast.”

The rest of the fleet had cleared the jump point by then, and all of the ships were bending onto the new course upward and to the side. “All units, this is Admiral Geary. At time four one, come port zero eight zero degrees and accelerate at maximum.” That would at least line up the fleet’s subformations in a column leading away from the alien force and give him as much time as possible to think of a solution to this mess that didn’t involve massive losses to his fleet. His eyes came to rest on a detailed image of one of the alien craft that the fleet’s sensors had compiled and his display had helpfully parked to one side. Unlike the tortoise-shaped ships they had encountered so far, these alien craft were simply cylinders with rounded bows, some kind of propulsion unit making up the entire back end, and a few low, small spines that must hold sensors sticking out from the sides. And that orbiting fort… “This is ugly,” he said to Desjani. “But none of this looks anything like the enigmas.”

“No, it doesn’t. At least there’s no hypernet gate here.”

“One small blessing.” They could race away from the jump exit without worrying about the threat of a gate. But if these weren’t the enigmas… “Could we have found a star system colonized by humans ? Some group who found themselves in enigma space and had to keep running until they found a star system on the other side of the enigmas?”

Desjani glanced back to her engineering watch. “What do you think, Master Chief?”

Gioninni shook his head. “No, Captain. None of the stuff we’ve seen resembles human designs. And the industrial base needed to build and maintain something like that fortress would be huge. Not something that could be thrown up overnight or in a few decades. They would have had to have been isolated out here for several centuries at least. How could they have gotten this far out that long ago? Maybe these aren’t those enigmas, but I’m not seeing anything that makes me think human.”

“Have we heard anything from these aliens or humans or whatever?” Geary asked. “There’s been time for at least a challenge to reach us from that fortress.”

The comm watch answered him. “No, Admiral. Not a word that we can tell was directed at us. And nothing that gives any clue to who they are. We’re picking up lots of their comms, but it’s all heavily encrypted.”

“Everything?” Desjani demanded.

“Yes, Captain. There’s no civilian comm traffic that we can find. It’s all military-grade encryption. At least, that’s what we’d call it if they were human.”

“Humans with that kind of discipline? No one taking shortcuts or ignoring comm requirements?”

“That doesn’t seem too likely, does it?” Geary agreed. “We don’t have time to consult the experts, and as long as whoever is directing those small craft keeps charging at us, we also don’t have any option but to defend ourselves.” He turned to look back and saw Rione in the observer’s seat, sitting silently, her eyes watching her own display. “Try to establish communications with them. Tell them we’ll be happy to leave and didn’t intend staying anyway and have no hostile intent. We don’t have much time to get those messages across,” he added, not sure if Rione understood just how bad the situation was.