Jack Campbell: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

It all added up to a requirement to leave some ships here, and even if Steadfast hadn’t been unable to keep up, Tulev would have been Geary’s choice for the independent assignment.

“Captain Tulev, I am detaching Formation Delta Two under your command. Your ships are to remain at Atalia and rescue everyone you can, recovering escape pods, assisting repairs to the damaged Alliance ships, and helping anyone you can in any of the damaged orbital facilities or other locations belonging to Atalia. Make sure none of those badly damaged dark ships get going again. I want them permanently neutralized. Get every prisoner you can off those dark ships. I need to know everything that you can learn from the prisoners as well as everything you can learn from examining the wrecks. We’ll bring the prisoners back to stand trial for war crimes. When you feel you have done all you can, return to Varandal.”

Tulev saluted, his expression betraying no reaction to the orders. “I assume that if more dark ships appear, I am to treat them as hostile.”

“Yes. I’m really hoping the surviving crews on those dark ships can explain—” Geary stopped speaking as he realized something. “We haven’t seen any escape pods leaving the dark ships we crippled.”

“No. We shall approach the damaged dark ships with care, remembering the example of the enigmas.”

The enigmas, who had destroyed their damaged ships in order to keep humans from capturing any or learning anything about their crews. But how could the crews of these ships be enigmas?

“We’re going to pursue the surviving dark ships,” Geary told Tulev. “If they try to attack Varandal, the Alliance defenses there will need our system patches in order to see who the attackers are. If the dark ships keep going, we’ll follow them. We need to know where they came from.”

Tulev’s face still revealed nothing of his feelings. “As far as we can tell, the problems in our software came from official sources. What if the answer to where these ships came from is not one we wish to know?”

“I have to know. We have to know. This is the Alliance, not the Syndicate Worlds.”

“I agree. You reminded us of that before. Perhaps there are others who have forgotten.”

The tension, the constant worry of a short time before, had been replaced by a long stern chase with no possibility of catching their prey. The dark ships could always reverse course and charge back to the attack, but Geary did not expect that to happen. No tactical system based on his decisions would come up with that course of action unless the situation was incredibly desperate and left no alternative.

“How’s Dauntless ?” Geary asked.

“Ready and willing,” Desjani replied, her expression serious. “I’m going to be honest with you. Those dark ships creep me out. I’m glad that Tulev’s boys and girls are the ones going in to investigate them.”

“He’ll be careful.”

As if mocking Geary’s words, an urgent alarm suddenly pulsed. “Admiral!” Lieutenant Yuon cried. “One of— Two of the— All of the crippled dark ships have self-destructed!”

“No escape pods,” Desjani commented.

Geary slumped back in his seat, wavering in his assessment of who and what these dark ships were. “At least none of Tulev’s ships were close enough to any of them yet. What the hell did they use to self-destruct? Even the broken segments that should have been nowhere near a power core have been blown into dust.”

“Power-core-equivalent explosions in all segments,” Lieutenant Castries confirmed. “Those ships were rigged to be able to leave nothing for anyone to exploit.”

“Would human crews sign on to that?” Desjani asked Geary.

“I… Dammit, Tanya, I don’t know. How could they be enigmas this deep in human space? How could they have Alliance weapons? Why would the survivors be fleeing toward Varandal?”

She laughed briefly and derisively. “Fair enough. I asked you a question you couldn’t answer. I deserved some back at me.”

“We’ll stay on those survivors,” Geary said. “Until they either turn and fight, or they lead us to their base. Then we’ll get some answers.”

“How about another question first?” Desjani was looking at her display, her expression somber. “Why did we spot those guys attacking Indras?”

“How could we miss it?” Geary asked. “We couldn’t see them, but we couldn’t avoid seeing the destruction.”

“Because we were transiting through Indras,” she emphasized. “Why were we transiting through Indras?”

“That’s two questions. Because— Because the Dancers insisted on going home immediately.”

“And they knew from previous discussions that our preferred route was through Indras.”

Geary eyed her, troubled. “You think the Dancers might have intended us to go through Indras during a period when we could spot the attack?”

“They told us they needed to go home right away, and then they told us to go home right away,” Desjani emphasized.

“How could the Dancers have known what the black ships were going to do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that long, spherical route they took from Varandal and back was designed to collect information. I don’t know,” she repeated. “But doesn’t it feel as if we were led there?”

“Maybe.” It could have been a coincidence. But he had a vision of the Dancers weaving a vast web, one spanning a good part of a galaxy, the web leading Geary and his ships to one particular place and one particular time. “If they did, at least they still left the decision on what to do up to us.”

“True,” Tanya agreed. “You can lead a human to something, but figuring out what they’ll do once they get there is a lot harder.”

One more complication. Perhaps a very big complication. Geary felt too tired to think it through. He checked his display. Even accelerating for all they were worth, and that was a lot, the dark ships would take about eight hours to reach the jump point for Varandal. Geary’s ships would take a few hours more.

He should rest. He should relax. But he stayed on the bridge, watching his display where the ships all crawled with what seemed snail-like slowness across the vast, empty reaches of a star system.

“Admiral?”

Geary jerked back to alertness, wondering whether he had been dozing or just zoned out. A virtual window had opened next to his seat, revealing not just Lieutenant Iger but also Lieutenant Jamenson. “Yes?”

“Sir, we have some important information,” Iger said.

Shaking the last traces of fuzz out of his mind, Geary sat up and eyed Jamenson curiously. “We?”

“Yes, sir. You did authorize Lieutenant Jamenson access to the intelligence compartment and to our information and, well, sir, my specialists and I thought it couldn’t hurt to bring in a fresh viewpoint because we hadn’t been able to reach any conclusions.”

“And what has Lieutenant Jamenson concluded?” Geary asked.

Lieutenant Jamenson’s usual ready smile wasn’t in evidence. Even her green hair seemed more a shade of somber Lincoln green than the usual bright Kelly green. Lieutenant Iger appeared equally solemn. “What is it?” Geary asked.

“We don’t know any more about who built and controlled those dark ships,” Iger said, “but we, I mean, Lieutenant Jamenson, has managed to unravel how they were constructed.”

Jamenson brought up a display next to her. “Admiral, I was looking for things that didn’t fit because that’s what I’m good at, and I thought, what’s missing from the wreckage? Or the dust from the wreckage, rather. Something should be there, and it’s not. A lot of somethings. There should be the usual amount of water molecules and organic matter from the supplies on the ships. And from… from the remains of the crew. There should be… pieces… of the crews, unless the ship was totally vaporized. There should be escape pods, and pieces of escape pods.”