Jack Campbell - Leviathan

“Is he for real?” Desjani asked.

“Actually, I’m wondering exactly that,” Geary said. “Is he real? Or are we looking at some recorded warn-off message that was triggered by our own attempts to communicate?”

“Automated comms?” Desjani gestured to her watch-standers. “Check with our experts on whether we can tell if that message was live or not.”

The eventual answer was “no.” “It’s digital,” the comm officer lamented. “We can tell when it was sent, but there’s no attached signature to let us know when it was prepared. Without that time stamp embedded in the message, we can’t tell whether it was put together a few hours ago or six months ago.” The officer paused. “But, presenting merely my opinion, I don’t think this was a live transmission. The wording was very generic, just the sort of thing we get told to put into messages intended for long-term use.”

Geary nodded. “But even if the message was prerecorded, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t sent by someone as opposed to being an automated response.”

“That’s true, Admiral. It doesn’t tell us anything except that whoever occupied those facilities did not have a welcome mat out for visitors.”

Six hours after that, urgent alerts sounded. Geary was already on his way to the bridge again and rushed the final distance, almost leaping into his command seat next to Tanya Desjani’s. “What is it?”

“We’ve probably found some of them,” she said briefly.

It took Geary a moment of studying his display to figure out exactly what he was seeing.

Some of the space docks were opening, their vast doors peeling back. Due to the angle at which the Alliance fleet was looking at the docks, they could not see inside yet, but there was only one plausible reason for those docks to be preparing to launch something. “Whatever is in those docks that are opening up should be easy for us to handle. They can’t hold too large a force.”

He had no sooner ceased speaking than another dock began cracking its doors.

“Will you stop doing that kind of thing?” Desjani growled at him.

But no other docks opened. Those which had begun opening finished the process, their doors fully retracted. And then, nothing happened.

“It’s been half an hour,” Desjani complained. “What are they waiting for?”

“Maybe there isn’t anything inside them,” Geary speculated. “Do you think they may have opened up because they saw us coming? Some automated maintenance function preparing to work on our ships?”

“No equipment in any of those docks is going to land one automated finger on my ship!” She glared at her display as if that would produce more information. “Maybe you’re right, though.”

More alerts sounded. “Or maybe I’m not,” Geary said.

The rounded, sharklike bows that began coming into view as they exited some of the docks were unmistakable in their menace. “Battle cruisers,” Desjani said, sounding eager. “Four of them.”

More, smaller warships began appearing at the dock openings. “Six heavy cruisers, ten light cruisers, twenty-one destroyers,” Lieutenant Yuon summarized.

“We can take these down easy,” Desjani exulted.

“If that’s all we’re facing,” Geary said, frowning at his display.

The dark ships had cleared their docks by now, and were gathering into a small, thin, rectangular formation. “Hull feature analysis identifies two of the dark battle cruisers as having been at Bhavan,” Lieutenant Yuon said. “The other two have not been encountered before.”

“The two that missed Bhavan,” Geary said. “I wonder why?”

“Stuff breaks,” Desjani said. “They probably needed something big fixed.”

The dark ship formation was coming around now and accelerating onto an intercept with Geary’s force. “Four hours to contact on current vectors,” Lieutenant Castries said.

Desjani’s satisfaction had faded into suspicion. “They’re making this too easy.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking that,” Geary said. “If those dark ships charge straight into us, we’ll be able to wipe them out on the first pass. Let’s see if they hold on that vector.”

He hadn’t slept nearly enough since arriving at Unity Alternate and found himself dozing off for brief periods in his command seat. An hour later, more alerts jerked him rudely back to alertness.

“More docks opening,” Desjani said. The same sequence followed, the docks opening, then a long pause, then the bows of warships beginning to appear. But this time the first, massive bows that came into view were blunter than those of the battle cruisers. “Battleships.”

“Four battleships,” Lieutenant Yuon said. “Four heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, eighteen destroyers.”

Like the dark battle cruisers before them, the battleships formed into a thin, rectangular formation, moving more slowly than the battle cruisers but with a terrible, ponderous assurance. The battleships also came around and accelerated onto vectors aimed at an intercept of Geary’s fleet.

“Tougher, but still nothing we can’t handle,” Desjani said. “They can’t have much more hidden in those docks.”

“I wonder why they didn’t bring them all out together,” Geary said. “Why send out two smaller forces instead of one bigger force?”

“It’s not what you would do,” she agreed. “Their battle cruisers’ vector is still aimed straight at the middle of our formation, which Black Jack definitely would not do under these conditions.”

“What would I be doing?” Geary murmured, trying to put himself in the place of a dark ship commander. “If those dark ships were all I had to defend their installations, I’d try to divert and distract the attacking force, but that would just buy some time even if it worked.” He reached one hand to point to his display. “We’ve got two assets we have to defend. Mistral , and the Dancers.”

“I think the Dancers can take care of themselves,” Desjani objected. “Their ships can outmaneuver even the dark battle cruisers. And if those four dark battle cruisers try to get to Mistral , we’ll blow them apart before they get within range.”

He nodded, thinking. “So why would I be setting up this situation if I was commanding those dark ships? We must be missing some part of the puzzle.”

“There can’t be much more inside the docks,” she repeated. “It’s possible they’ve got something hidden behind one of the stars if they knew we were coming and had time to get into position.”

“Senator Unruh warned me that the dark ships might still be getting information about what we were doing,” Geary said. “And we couldn’t hide our preparations to leave Varandal.”

“But how would the dark ships have known we were coming here?”

“Maybe a leak in Senator Unruh’s camp. Maybe just through thinking what I would do. I realized I had to hit their base. Since they are programmed to think like me, they would realize that I had to hit their base.”

Desjani looked troubled. “Admiral, that makes enough sense that it worries me. They know from Bhavan that they can’t easily force us into an engagement. They would want to choose a new battlefield where they could more easily trap us.”

Like a battlefield without any jump points. One where the only way out was through the hypernet gate—“Oh, no.”

“What?”

“The Alliance was studying how the Syndics were able to block access to their hypernet gates. They were trying to figure out how the Syndics did that so we could counter it. But if some of the Alliance’s researchers figured out what the Syndics were doing—”

“And the people supporting the dark ships found out?” Desjani stared at the depiction of the hypernet gate. “The people who think Black Jack is what stands between them and taking over? Admiral, you are making way too much sense.”