Jack Campbell: Invincible

“Launch it,” Geary ordered.

The kinetic round was simply a large slug of solid metal, heavy enough that even Dauntless jerked slightly when the object was launched at tremendous velocity on a trajectory aimed at the nearest alien fortress, the same fortress that had sent the attack force against Geary’s fleet. “Sixty-five minutes to impact,” Desjani reported, still smiling.

At least now she was in a good mood.

If he could have looked out a window in the side of Dauntless , if such a window had existed instead of sensors feeding into virtual windows and displays through the ship, and if Dauntless ’s bridge had been near the outside of the hull instead of buried within it, the stars outside wouldn’t have shown any sign of moving. If Geary called up an image of Dauntless seen from one of the other ships of the fleet, the large human ship would have seemed very tiny as it hung apparently motionless in space. There would have been no indications that the battle cruiser was moving at a velocity of point zero five light speed, or about fifteen thousand kilometers per second. Unthinkably fast on the surface of a planet, that speed felt slow among the vast distances between planets. If humans had been forced to use such velocities to travel between stars, the voyages would have required years and decades.

And he wouldn’t have found himself stuck out here, much farther than any humans had ever gone before, dealing with another alien species that didn’t seem to be thrilled at the opportunity to meet humanity face-to-face.

At least the Alliance government couldn’t claim that he hadn’t followed orders. He had definitely found the limit of space in this direction controlled by the enigma race.

Geary sat watching the fleet re-form around Dauntless , the other ships using the flagship as their point of reference. He took comfort in the familiarity and the expertise the ship movements demonstrated.

“Excuse me, Admiral,” Desjani said.

He tried not to flinch, jarred out of a momentary sense of respite and wondering what he might have forgotten. “What?”

“There’s something about those superbattleships these aliens have. Have you noticed their propulsion isn’t proportionate to their mass?”

Geary glanced at her. “Less than in one of our battleships?”

“Yes.” Desjani pointed at her own display. “Our systems estimate they maneuver compared to our battleships the way our battleships maneuver compared to our battle cruisers. That is, they need a while to get speed up, and they turn like pigs after a big meal.”

He looked at where the massive alien warships, light-hours distant, were still orbiting, oblivious to the Alliance fleet, but which would surely turn to accelerate on intercepts with the Alliance ships as soon as the light from the arrival of the human fleet reached them. Then Geary looked at each of the jump points that offered escape from this star system, where the massive fortresses the size of minor planets orbited like deadly prison guards. “We can outrun them, but there’s no place to run.”

“Yes, but…” Desjani made an uncharacteristically indecisive gesture. “Those warships are designed that way for a reason. Some way they’re employed. How would you use something like that?”

Geary shook his head, imagining an encounter with one of those superbattleships. “It would go through the fleet like a knife through butter. We couldn’t stop it. Is that what they’re designed to do? Charge into and through anything?” Another comm alert chimed. “Excuse me, Captain Desjani.” The image of the fleet’s senior doctor reappeared before Geary.

Dr. Nasr beamed with satisfaction. “We have a partial reconstruction of these creatures, Admiral, with a high degree of confidence as to accuracy.”

“How do you stick the pieces back together?” Geary asked, hoping that the answer wouldn’t upset his stomach too badly.

“There are various—Oh, you mean this time? We haven’t had time to get the real remains and manipulate them. Those are still in quarantine. But we had virtual copies made and were able to play with those until we fit them together.” The doctor made fitting together small pieces of once-living creatures sound like a fascinating pastime.

Next to the surgeon, a large image appeared.

Geary stared, speechless for a moment. Finally recovering, he tapped a control to forward the image. “Tanya, this is what they look like.”

She gave him a curious glance, then sat looking for a while at the image Geary had sent before she could say anything. “You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Teddy bears.” Desjani pointed at the chubby, furry image. “We were attacked by teddy bears?”

The creature, at least in this virtual reconstruction, was about a meter tall and covered with short, curly fur. The virtual image didn’t display any blood or exposed internal body parts, just blurred filler in sometimes large sections where needed. The creature, with gleaming eyes set amid chubby cheeks, a shovel snout that seemed more cowlike than bearlike, and rounded ears above the skull, appeared to be… cute. “They’re carnivores?” Geary asked the doctor.

“No. Herbivores.”

“Herbivores?”

“Cows,” Desjani said in a hollow voice. “Cute little cows. Homicidal, cute little teddy bear-cows who build giant war machines.”

Geary took another look at the image, his imagination supplying a malicious glint to the adorable eyes set in the chubby face of the teddy bear-cow. “Forward this to our experts on intelligent alien species,” he told the doctor. The experts hadn’t actually known anything about any real intelligent alien species until this fleet had penetrated enigma space recently, but they were still the best thing he had available. “And to Lieutenant Iger in Intelligence, please.”

By the time he could watch the large kinetic projectile that Dauntless had launched reach the nearest alien fortress, the fleet had moved another three light-minutes farther away. Thus he watched the events unfold almost ten minutes after they actually took place.

The five-hundred-kilogram chunk of metal, shaped like an ancient image of a rocket in case it needed that streamlined shape to be dropped through atmosphere onto a planetary target, arced down toward the alien fortress. Traveling at thousands of kilometers per second, it held tremendous kinetic energy, which would be released on impact with its target.

But thousands of kilometers short of that target, the path of the projectile began bending quickly, so that it eventually raced harmlessly past the fortress, a clean miss.

“How did they do that?” Geary asked.

“Good question,” Desjani replied. “Let’s hope the sensors picked up enough to figure out the answer.”

“Yeah.”

“And we have to discuss whatever the sensors did or didn’t see with different people for different insights,” she added.

“I’m going to have to hold a meeting, aren’t I?”

“I’m afraid so.”

The main alien armada would be seeing the light of the human fleet’s arrival in about another two hours, doubtless at the same time as they received messages from the orbiting alien fortress alerting them to the presence of intruders in this star system. Closer alien warships would already have seen the human fleet, but the light showing their reactions wouldn’t reach Geary’s ships for hours yet.

He had little doubt what those reactions would be. However, at the moment, the danger of further combat with these aliens was as distant as it would be for the remainder of their time in this system. There wouldn’t be a better time for sharing his plans and receiving any inputs from the fleet’s ship captains.