Jack Campbell - Invincible

Geary found himself thinking about those superbattleships. They weren’t inherently slower than the much smaller human battleships. Given time, the bear-cow superbattleships could reach the same velocities as the human warships. They were doing so now, accelerating steadily on an intercept with his fleet. But that acceleration would take more time, significantly more time, and attempting to alter their trajectories using thrusters would also take more time. It wasn’t just the relatively weak propulsion, it was also the greater mass of the superbattleships. Getting that much mass to turn took a lot of power or a lot of time, and the superbattleships didn’t have the power.

Like this video he was watching. A charging bull, thundering ahead, missing his target, slewing around to face a more nimble opponent in the form of a man wearing some sort of garish costume, but the man danced away from the bull, anticipating its moves…

Geary looked at the frozen images of his last simulation, still floating above the table. The massive fortress, the wave of missile craft, the bear-cow armada outmaneuvered and out of position well off to one side. That was how he had done every simulation, outmaneuvering the bear-cow armada so it was out of the way. But if you could maneuver the armada into going somewhere, then maybe…

“Tanya!”

He had used the command override without thinking, blasting his message through her comm without her having a chance to wake and accept it, and now Tanya’s image blinked blearily at him. “This better really be about my tactical expertise, Admiral, since you seem to have ignored my advice while I took yours.”

“I followed your other advice. Tanya, I think I know how to do it, but I’m not good enough at maneuvering to make it work. I need you to work up the maneuvers and see if it’s plausible.”

“Now?”

Geary hesitated, suddenly aware of the time. Hours had passed while he flipped through research files. Yet Tanya had asked the question in all seriousness. She would jump right on the problem if he asked her because she was a damned fine officer. “Uh… no. We’re still a long way from the jump point we need to use, and that bear-cow armada is a long way from intercept. You can look at it in the morning. Go ahead and go back to sleep.”

That earned him a flat look that promised retribution at some future time. “You wake me up,” Desjani said, “tell me you have a possible solution, then tell me to get back to sleep. Thank you, sir . Send me your idea. I might as well look at it since the odds of my getting any more sleep before the ship’s day begins seem to be very remote. Not that there’s much time left before the ship’s day begins, is there?”

Maybe she would forgive him if the idea proved to be workable.

The bear-cow armada continued to grow in size as individual ships joined up, the entire force continuing on a path to intercept the human fleet. The human fleet hadn’t altered its own vector, still curving through the outer edges of the star system toward the next jump point. If no one altered speeds or trajectories, in thirty-two hours, the fleet would come within estimated range of the missile ships based on the alien fortress, and in thirty-five hours, the alien armada would intercept whatever was left of the human fleet after that.

Geary sat looking at the display, wondering what Desjani would think of his idea. At least she hadn’t already dismissed it as unworkable. Since no one had provided him with any alternative ideas as of yet, he had to keep hoping it could work.

Worn-out, but too keyed up to sleep, he left his stateroom to walk the passageways of Dauntless as the morning crew came on duty. They had to see him, had to see the admiral looking confident and calm. He didn’t feel particularly confident or calm, but figuring out how to look that way regardless was an important part of being an officer. Don’t worry too much about the sailors’ seeing you get a little worried sometimes, one of his chief petty officers had told Geary when he was a lieutenant. That just tells them you’re smart enough to know when to worry. Don’t look too worried, or they’ll think you don’t know what to do. And, for the love of your ancestors, never look like you’re never worried. That’ll make the crew think you’re either an idiot or a fool. They know officers are human, and no human with half a brain is never worried. But as long as you seem to know what you’re doing, they’ll follow you.

The memory, of a woman who had probably died eighty or more years ago in the first decades of the war with the Syndics, brought a smile to Geary’s lips. The Master Chief Gioninni he had met a while back didn’t have the same last name, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have been a descendant of Senior Chief Voss. Certainly he seemed to have the same genes for conniving and chicanery that had made Voss extremely valuable to then-Lieutenant Geary, as well as a constant source of anxiety.

The crew members he passed saw Geary’s smile, and their own worried expressions faded into confidence. The admiral obviously had the situation well in hand. It’s a good thing that Desjani is the only person on this ship who can read my mind, he thought wryly.

His walk brought him past the worship spaces, where members of the crew could follow their own practices in privacy. Geary chose a small room and sat down alone, lighting the small candle that waited there. Ancestors, help me make the right decisions. What more could he ask? But he shouldn’t just ask for things. My thanks for helping to bring us this far.

He was starting to stand when Geary remembered one other issue and sat back down. Commander Michael Geary. We still don’t know if you died when your ship Repulse was destroyed. Are you there with our ancestors? He tried to sense a response and felt nothing. Your sister, my grandniece, is acting odd. I don’t know what’s going on with her. It’s more than just a much higher level of aggressiveness. That’s just a symptom of something. But what? If you know, please help me understand.

And if you’re still alive, captive of the Syndics, I’ll find you and liberate you someday. I won’t stop trying. I promise.

Geary went back to his stateroom after that. He felt weary. Thinking about his grandniece and very-probably-dead grandnephew, the descendants of his own brother, who had aged and died long ago, had brought to the fore memories of that brother. The weight of the past had come down upon him again, and he could no longer smile, thinking of those who had died while he was in survival sleep for a century. Fortunately, there was always much to be done, and he could seek a small form of oblivion in the mass of work.

Once back in his stateroom, Geary paged through the multitude of messages in his queue. The fleet commander received hundreds a day, only a few dealing with major factors requiring decisions from him. But to make those big decisions he needed to know a lot of little things, so many other bits of information and reports were either forwarded to him or just passed on for background. Geary skimmed through message headers, sometimes pausing to also skim through the underlying material, only occasionally pausing to read through something of particular import.

The uncrewed probes sent to the wreckage of the alien ships to find traces of their former crews had also collected pieces of the wreckage. The report forwarded by Captain Smythe summarized what had been learned from those so far, which, unfortunately, wasn’t much. Unsurprising mix of alloys and composites… structural analysis of alloys reveals some intriguing signs of unusual casting techniques… composites tilted more heavily toward silicon than carbon, suggesting relative abundance of those elements on alien home world… no portions of equipment found large enough to provide critical information as to functions or design.