Jack Campbell - Leviathan

He had arranged his own fleet into three formations again, this time three diamonds arranged vertically. The leading diamond contained all nine battle cruisers, while the other two, currently arranged one slightly behind and below and the other slightly behind and above, each held nine battleships. Ten heavy cruisers accompanied each battleship formation, along with ten light cruisers each, while the remaining twenty-one light cruisers were with the battle cruisers. Thirty destroyers were with each battleship formation, the remaining fifty-two with the battle cruisers.

It gave him a leading formation designed for fast attacks and two trailing formations designed to hit hard.

If Tanya was right, and he thought she was, the dark ships would aim to take out Geary’s battle cruiser formation first. “Our battle cruisers have to be the bait, and the two battleship formations will be the jaws of the trap,” Geary said.

She grinned at him. “Now that’s Black Jack talking.”

“I’ll have to see how the dark ships set up their formations to attack us,” he added. “They won’t hold that single rectangle.”

“Not if they’re programmed to simulate Black Jack. I bet you we’ll see three subformations,” Desjani added.

“I do that a lot?”

“Sure do. But that’s all right. If the dark ships see you doing what they expect you to do, it will feed their confidence.”

That sounded wrong. “They’re not capable of confidence,” Geary said. “How about saying they won’t question the assumptions in their calculations?”

She shook her head more firmly this time. “Look, those may be machines, but there are humans behind them. Humans cut the code, humans refined the results, humans ran the tests and decided what outcomes were good enough. As far as I’m concerned, we are fighting those humans. And I want to kick their butts.”

“Fair enough. That feels better than thinking we’re fighting monsters, doesn’t it?”

Desjani grinned. “Sure does. And it helps my confidence. I can beat up software designers without breaking a sweat.”

He gave her a surprised look. “Have you actually done that?”

“No!” She appeared to be genuinely offended by the idea. “I’ve always stood up for the nerds, ever since I was a kid. I was one of them! And look how they’ve repaid me.” Desjani waved at her display and the images of the dark ships on it.

“Creating monsters. Yeah.” But her words had given him an idea for demystifying the dark ships, which felt intimidating for their alienness as well as their strength. He reached for the comm control. “All units in First Fleet, stand down your crews from combat alert for the next five hours. We will be moving to intercept and engage the dark ships. Remember that when we fight those ships, we are fighting the humans who programmed them. Those are the people we have to beat. Geary, out.”

He thought for a moment longer, then touched an internal comm control. “Lieutenant Iger, please inform the alleged agents that we have in custody that we are about to engage in combat with a large force of dark ships. If they want to increase their odds of surviving that battle, they might want to start talking to us.”

“I will pass that on, Admiral,” Iger said, looking discouraged, “but it probably won’t influence them. Those two are hard-core knuckle-draggers. I’m certain they would take it as a point of pride to die not having told us a thing.”

“Even if it led to a disaster for the Alliance,” Geary said. “May the living stars preserve us from those so certain of their own virtue.”

Telling others to rest was one thing. Being able to rest himself was another.

His first stop after leaving the bridge had been his own stateroom, where Geary had carefully composed a message in the hope that Admiral Bloch was present with the dark ships and that Admiral Bloch still had control over them.

“Admiral Bloch, we are both on the side of the Alliance. The ships you command are a threat to the Alliance. We need every warship we can get to deal with threats posed by the remnants of the Syndicate Worlds, especially after what happened at Indras. We also face threats from the enigmas and possibly the creatures we have nicknamed Kicks. I assume you’ve seen the Kick battleship we captured and renamed Invincible . You know the level of danger they pose. We can work together to preserve the Alliance instead of destroying the means for the Alliance to defend itself. I await any communication from you to discuss our options and the best route forward from here. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”

He did not expect Bloch to reply. But maybe he would. Maybe they could make some sort of deal that would halt the dark ships long enough for the government to reestablish control over them.

After sending the message as a broadcast to the dark ships, he tried to get some sleep but could not, his mind irrationally waiting for a reply that could not appear for at least several more hours given that light could only travel a bit more than a billion kilometers an hour, and there were a lot of billions of kilometers between this battle cruiser and the dark ships. Giving up the effort to rest, Geary walked through the passageways of Dauntless , trying to sense the state of the crew’s morale and trying to settle his own nerves. There was something deeply disturbing about fighting a totally automated foe with no living creature in direct command. The upset didn’t make sense on any intellectual basis. Why did it matter what was trying to kill you? But it did. Somewhere inside, Geary had a firm conviction that it should always be who was trying to kill you. As Tulev had said, when it became accurate to instead say what was pulling the trigger, it felt wrong.

Up ahead in the passageway, Geary could see Master Chief Gioninni talking to a junior sailor. He knew what the conversation must be like, since the body language of both participants made it clear that the sailor had messed something up, and the master chief was “explaining” to the sailor why this was a bad thing and must not be repeated.

Both paused in their discussion to face Geary and salute, the sailor rigidly correct and Master Chief Gioninni correct in the manner of someone who didn’t even have to think about how to do it right in order to do it right. “How is everything going, Master Chief?” Geary asked.

“No problems, Admiral,” Gioninni assured him. “I’m just providing a little extra instruction to Seaman William T. Door, here.”

“I hope he appreciates the opportunity,” Geary said, keeping his voice sounding serious. “There has been many a time I wished someone could tell me how to get something done.”

Seaman Door did not, in fact, look as if he appreciated his good fortune.

Gioninni grinned. “If you’re trolling for advice, Admiral…”

“The first thing I learned as an ensign was the importance of listening to chief petty officers,” Geary said.

“Then, sir, I know we’re trying to outsmart those dark ships. I would suggest that if you are trying to put a scam over on someone, which is not a matter I have much personal experience with, you understand, then you would want to show them what they expect and what they most want, because that will make your mark confident and eager.”

Geary nodded at Gioninni. “Even if they’re an AI?”

“Sir, did you ever know a computer to question itself? Humans do. Not enough for their best interests, but still they manage at times. But computers? All you can do is kick ’em or reboot ’em or wipe them clean and start over. Those who have total confidence in themselves are the easiest marks by far.”

“Not that you have much personal experience with that kind of thing,” Geary noted.