Jack Campbell - Leviathan

“Sir,” Colonel Rico said, “we’ll get the job done. This is about defending the Alliance, right?”

“I promise you that it is,” Geary said. “I have orders from the highest levels for this operation.”

“Then we’ll get the job done as long as the bus gets us there.”

Commander Young gave him an arch look. “The bus will get your freeloaders there. After that, it will be up to you Marines to pay for the ride.”

“We’ll earn our fare,” Rico said. “We got this, Admiral.”

“Excellent,” Geary said. “We have some emergency repairs that have to be completed on some of the warships, so the departure date for the assault will be about a week from now. Have your ship and your Marines ready.”

“We could go within twenty-four hours, sir,” Commander Young said. “As long as the Marines are ready to load. We’re already preloaded with most of their equipment.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Rico agreed.

After they had left, Geary checked the latest updates on maintenance and supply. Formidable was the last battle cruiser still in dock and would be getting pushed out on an emergency basis the next day. Fearless would have all of her main propulsion systems in working order within thirty-six hours, under threat of being left behind when the fleet moved. The shameful possibility of being the only battleship to miss the upcoming fight had driven the crew of Fearless and the maintenance personnel working with them to superhuman efforts to ensure the job was done.

Admiral Timbale was emptying the supply centers at Varandal of every fuel cell available. It wouldn’t be enough on such short notice to top off all of the warships, but only the battleships and battle cruisers would be at less than one hundred percent starting out. There were also frustrating shortages of specter missiles, and even a baffling shortfall in grapeshot. “They’re just ball bearings!” Geary had protested. “Round pieces of metal! How hard can it be to make more of them?” But other priorities had interfered, so some of the warships would be heading out with less than full shot lockers.

The good news in terms of food supplies was that there had been plenty of ration bars available to be loaded onto the ships to provide meals during battle situations. The bad news was that nearly every crate was made up of the infamous Danaka Yoruk bars, which had apparently been stockpiled to feed to Syndic prisoners of war who had then unexpectedly been released into the custody of representatives of the Midway Star System. Geary took under serious consideration Desjani’s suggestion that they use the Danaka Yoruk bars as substitutes for the inadequate supply of metal grapeshot.

Exhausted by going over the status reports, expediting what needed to be expedited, delaying what could be delayed, making sure the right people were in the right positions, planning for what would be done at Unity Alternate, and coordinating actions, Geary finally managed to sleep.

“Admiral!”

Geary bolted awake, shocked by the urgency in the summons. He sat up in his bunk, slapping the nearest comm panel. “Here. What’s happened?”

“They—They’re back, sir!”

“Who is back?” Geary roared with what he thought was an immense amount of patience. Only the fact that the caller sounded surprised rather than scared, which is what he would have expected if those who were back were the dark ships, kept him from bolting for the bridge without waiting for further explanation.

“The Dancers, sir. A lot of them.”

“The Dancers ?” That was the last thing he had expected to hear. Geary called up the display in his stateroom and stared at the image before him.

Forty Dancer ships had arrived in Varandal. Arrived at the jump point from Bhavan. The perfect ovoids of the Dancer ships gleamed against the black backdrop of space. They were arranged in an intricate formation that made them resemble a complex necklace of immense pearls speeding through the emptiness with perfectly coordinated movements.

Geary reached the bridge of Dauntless within a few minutes. “How the hell did the Dancers get to Bhavan?” he demanded.

Tanya Desjani had beaten him to the bridge. “You’re not going to like the answer.”

General Charban was already there as well. He turned a bland look on Geary, as if determined to no longer be fazed by anything the Dancers did. “According to your experts, Admiral, they didn’t come from Bhavan.”

“They arrived at the jump point from Bhavan,” Geary insisted.

Charban indicated Lieutenant Castries, who looked uncomfortable. “Admiral,” she said, “we got a weird signature when the Dancers left jump.”

“A weird signature?” Geary pressed both hands against his forehead. “What does that mean?”

“Sir, when ships leave jump, they always emit a small burst of energy. It’s insignificant, and no one really knows what causes it, so no one worries about it.”

“Jaylen Cresida speculated that it might be caused by some sort of friction while traveling through jump space,” Desjani said, seated and with her chin resting in one palm. “As the lieutenant says, it’s so small an effect that it just gets noted and ignored.”

Geary nodded impatiently. “All right. I remember that. There was a research project before… before Grendel. A ship I was on assisted the research. I never heard any results from it, though.”

Lieutenant Castries indicated her display. “Our systems alerted us that when the Dancers left jump, the energy signature they gave off was much stronger than it should be and also had some unusual density readings.”

“Put it on my display,” Geary ordered, sitting down and glaring at the data as it sprang to life before him. “What the hell is that?”

“We… don’t know, sir.”

“The Dancer ships haven’t shown that kind of energy signature before when leaving jump?”

“No, sir.”

Charban cleared his throat. “Admiral, the Dancers insisted on going to Old Earth, so they could return the body of a human explorer who had been involved in early research into jump drives centuries ago. Apparently, he was in jump space for a very long time and did not come out until somewhere in the Dancer-occupied region of the galaxy.”

“I’m not likely to forget that,” Geary said. Being trapped in jump space was perhaps the worst nightmare scenario for space travelers. The thought of that ancient astronaut stuck in jump space until he died had rattled everyone who heard of it. “Hold on. Are you saying the Dancers might have jumped to Varandal not from Bhavan but all the way from their own territory? They would have been in jump space for months. No one could handle that.”

“No human could handle that,” Desjani corrected him.

Geary looked at her. “I had wondered what jump space felt like for the Dancers. Is there any other explanation for their getting here?”

“They could have jumped star by star all the way from the region of space they occupy,” she said. “But that many jumps and transiting that many star systems would have taken so long that they would have had to have started about a year ago.”

“Could they have figured out how to use the Syndic hypernet? Could they have gotten a Syndic key?”

“Yes, sir, but then why did they jump here from Bhavan rather than from Atalia or some other star on the Syndic side of things?”

Geary looked back at Castries. “Exactly how long would a single jump all the way from Dancer space take?”

Lieutenant Castries made a helpless gesture. “Sir, we don’t know. All we can do is extrapolate from the jumps we make from star to adjacent star, but we don’t know if there is a straight correlation between distances in our universe and distances in jump space, or what happens when you jump to a star much farther off than the ones nearest to the jump point you used.”