Jack Campbell: Invincible

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather tell her yourself?”

“No, sir.”

“She’s right here.”

“Then she already heard it, sir.” Shen paused. “Hell of a mess there. I thought we’d lose a lot more ships than we did. Interesting tactics. Is that all, Admiral?”

“No. Keep me informed about the status of your wounded. I can get Tsunami over to you if you need her medical assistance. And we need that propulsion unit online again as quickly as possible. If we tangle with the inhabitants of this star system again, Orion will need full propulsion capability. Captain Smythe will be sending Kupua over to assist in getting that propulsion unit working again.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Shen said.

“Thank you , Captain.” Geary ended the conversation, then looked at Desjani. “You didn’t seem bothered by disparaging comments from a battleship captain.”

“He earned the right to one comment during that fight,” Desjani replied. “Besides, he saved my butt once when we were both serving on the Pavis . And he told you how much you’d impressed him, so I’ll give him a pass this time on his otherwise-amateurish opinions.”

“He told me I’d impressed him?” Geary asked.

“Absolutely. In his own way.”

Geary shook his head, looking at the damage being displayed on Invincible . “Luck had as much to do with it as anything I did.”

“Wrong,” Desjani said. “Sir. Look at the combat systems evaluation of the engagement. When our formation scattered, the enemy required from ten to twenty seconds to alter courses and seek out new targets. We weren’t lucky. The last-minute disintegration of our formation confused the aliens, just as you intended. Those seconds of hesitation gave us enough time to evade and blow away the enemies who hadn’t already been destroyed. The ships that took advantage of that avoided getting hit, except for poor Zaghnal . She must have just had bad luck.”

“And Invincible …” He ordered the combat systems to replay the moments before Invincible got hit. The order went out to scatter, maneuvering independently to confuse the attackers. All around Invincible , warships altered trajectories, but the battle cruiser didn’t change either direction or velocity as seconds crawled by. Five seconds. Ten seconds. At fourteen seconds, Invincible ’s thrusters started firing but hadn’t been able to change the warship’s vector before an alien missile ship slammed into contact and detonated. “He froze up. Captain Vente froze up instead of immediately taking action.”

“And you’re surprised?” Desjani murmured.

“Assuming he’s still alive, Vente has had his last command in this fleet,” Geary replied, hearing the savage edge to his voice. Why didn’t I relieve him earlier? Why didn’t I find a reason? Now who knows how many of Invincible ’s crew are dead because Vente wasn’t qualified for his command, and I had good reason to believe he wasn’t qualified but didn’t act in time. It’s my fault as much as Vente’s, damn it.

“It’s not your fault,” Desjani said.

He stared at her. “How did you—?”

“I know you. Listen. Headquarters assigned him to command of Invincible . You had suspicions he wasn’t qualified, but you can’t relieve a commanding officer purely on suspicions. Otherwise, you might have taken Shen off Orion before this. You need cause to relieve a commanding officer. It’s been that way for a long, long time, and for good reason.” Desjani watched him. “Understand?”

“No. It’s still my fault. We may have lost Invincible because I didn’t act in time when I knew I should.” As if summoned by his words, an alert flashed on his display. “Message from Tanuki , Admiral,” the communications watch announced.

“Forward it,” Geary ordered, and an instant later the image of Captain Smythe popped up before Geary. Smythe, commanding officer of the auxiliary Tanuki and the senior fleet engineer, for once lacked his usual jaunty attitude. “I’ve personally gone over the damage to Invincible , Admiral. I doubt that you’ll be pleased to hear that your choices are simple and limited.”

“She’s hurt that badly?” Geary asked.

Space being as huge as it was, ships were often light-minutes or light-hours apart, leading to incredibly frustrating delays in conversations as messages crawled across millions or billions of kilometers at the speed of light. This time the fleet was close enough together that only a couple of seconds passed before Smythe shrugged in response. “It depends which parts of Invincible you’re talking about. Many of her weapons are actually in surprisingly good shape. But what really matters is the structural and propulsion damage inflicted by those missile ships. It’s severe. Invincible can’t move herself, and if anyone else tries to tow her, she’ll probably crack into a few large pieces. Give me a few months and a fleet dock, and I could get her going again.” Even though that couldn’t happen, Smythe clearly wished he could fix up the wrecked ship.

“We don’t have either the time or the repair facilities,” Geary said, his eyes going to the part of his display showing considerable numbers of other alien warships, some of them massive but, fortunately, none of them close. After the fleet’s dash away from the orbital fortress guarding the jump point, that menace was now about seven light-minutes distant and getting farther away with every moment. Some of the alien warships were about three light-hours from the human fleet, but the main armada of alien warships had been identified at nearly four light-hours away, near the primary inhabited world in this star system. That armada wouldn’t even see the light from the human fleet’s arrival for another three hours; and then, even if they immediately accelerated on intercepts with the human force, would require days to get within range unless Geary decided to turn and race toward contact. But Invincible couldn’t maneuver, making her a sitting duck even if the aliens had been a week’s travel time distant. Looking at the huge warships that made up the center of the alien armada, superbattleships massing three times as large as the biggest human battleships, Geary had no intention of coming any closer to that armada than he had to. “Exactly what choices do I have, then?”

“Blow up Invincible or leave her for the, uh, whatever it is that lives here.” Smythe looked and sounded unhappy at having to lay out those options.

Geary knew that his frustration was showing, but he tried to keep it out of his voice. No one liked delivering bad news, but he had learned long ago how easily a commander could discourage anyone from passing on important information by reacting harshly to the bearers of unpleasant truths. “We can’t leave her. Not when the occupants of this star system have demonstrated such reflexive aggression toward us. I’ll order Invincible ’s surviving crew members evacuated immediately. Have your engineers prepare her for scuttling, and make sure it’s complete. I don’t want anything left intact.”

Smythe nodded. “ Invincible ’s power core is still online. We can goose the output when we overload it to ensure nothing much is left but dust. However, I would very much appreciate the opportunity to take everything that I can off Invincible before then. She has a lot of equipment we can use instead of manufacturing new components for ships that need them.”

It should have been an easy decision. To an engineer like Smythe, it simply made sense to recover equipment from Invincible to use as spare parts for other ships. But… “Tanya?”