Jack Campbell - Leviathan

One blessing was that in a bow-on engagement, there had been few hits on propulsion and maneuvering systems. None of the damaged Alliance warships would be unable to keep up with their fellows.

Unfortunately, that was also true of the dark ships.

On the positive side, one of the dark battle cruisers was gone and the other three had been damaged enough to break off their attack. The dark ships had also lost two more heavy cruisers, another light cruiser, and four more destroyers.

“If they hadn’t veered off their attack vector, they would have been wiped out,” Desjani said, her right hand forming a fist that she rapped against her seat in frustration. “It looks like they tried to shift targets at the last instant to the ships in Delta One, then to the Dancers.”

“I bet they did,” Geary said, studying the results of the engagement replayed in very slow motion. “That was their fix to what we did at Bhavan, to allow last-moment retargeting outside normal parameters. But that meant in this engagement they ended up losing their chances at a lot of shots by shifting targets too often and too easily.”

He grimaced as he looked over the results, and the sharp curve of the path the remaining dark ships in that group were following as they swung out to one side and down relative to Geary’s formation. “We didn’t hit them hard enough.” He had always tried to avoid battles of attrition in which each side wore down the other, taking and inflicting losses at terrible rates. But he was beginning to believe that this battle would offer no alternatives to that strategy that weren’t even worse.

“Delta One,” Geary sent, “maintain your position relative to this formation until we clear the enemy support facility region.”

The government facility, a vast structure orbiting in solitary splendor, gleamed as Geary’s fleet swept past it. Hazard lights were visible on the outside of the structure, and on Geary’s display the exterior view of the facility was overlain with sensor readings of heat leakage and power use that showed which portions of the facility were in use. The intended home for an Alliance government in exile radiated a sense of great strength as well as great size, which struck Geary as ironic given its intended function. The only way this facility would ever have been occupied by the Alliance government was if Unity had fallen and most if not all of the Alliance had been occupied by the Syndics. Its use for its intended functions would have marked last-ditch desperation and defeat, not strength.

“We might have had to use this,” Desjani said. “If you hadn’t shown up.”

“And now it’s my job to neutralize it,” Geary said. “Are the living stars laughing?”

Mistral was partly out of sight around the curve of the facility as she backed in to the dock, her main propulsion flaring at full power as the assault transport slowed rapidly over the last few thousand meters before exactly matching the orbital vector of the facility. Geary saw Mistral ’s propulsion stutter once as Commander Young fine-tuned the braking slightly, maneuvering thrusters also adjusting the transport’s angle of approach. Seconds later, the transport glided into the dock, comm relays dropped in Mistral ’s wake still providing a solid link to the assault ship for the rest of the fleet even though she was now completely within the hangar.

As far as Geary could see, no other dark ships were maneuvering to attack Mistral . Now that she was inside the dock, the dark ships appeared to have completely lost interest in her. “Good work, Commander,” Geary sent. “The dark ships are not continuing to target Mistral . But don’t forget that the dark ships may well be trying to work around whatever prevents them firing on that facility and on you. We don’t know how much time you have.”

New virtual windows had popped up next to Geary’s seat, showing the views from the armor of Marines who were already charging off Mistral and storming the facility. If he wanted to, Geary could call up the view from the armor of any Marine in the assault force, but at the moment he had a job to do dealing with the dark ships. He couldn’t waste his attention riding the shoulder of a Marine lieutenant or sergeant or private.

Still, the windows were there, visible to a glance to the side, so Geary could remain aware of what was happening with the Marines without focusing his attention on them. He saw assault teams hacking the controls on hatches to allow access to inside the facility before he was called back to the larger picture by Desjani.

“We just got the ping back from the hypernet gate,” Desjani said. “You were right. The hypernet gate is reporting that there are no other gates accessible from it. It’s blocked.”

“I wish I’d been wrong on that one.” Geary touched a comm control. “Victoria, the gate is blocked. We need to know how to unblock it.”

“I was already assuming the worst, Admiral,” she replied. Rione had not yet left Mistral but was poised to follow the Marines inside the facility. “It saves time in situations like this. If that information is on this facility, I will find it.”

“Five minutes to bombardment launch,” Lieutenant Yuon said. “Uh, combat systems are still requesting confirmation of plan and authorization to launch, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Geary said. He called up that data again, saw that nothing had changed to alter his intentions, confirmed the bombardment plan, then authorized the launch to take place automatically as his warships reached the right points along their paths. “Do you ever think it ought to be harder to cause this much destruction, Tanya?”

Desjani gave him a disbelieving look. “No. It’s too hard as it is. If something needs to be destroyed, let me destroy the blasted thing.”

“Not everyone has your sense of restraint, Tanya.”

“Excuse me, Admiral?”

He didn’t answer as Geary’s fleet swept through the orbital region holding the docks and warehouses. The docks were huge, rectangular structures, with almost-as-large superstructures on their backs that contained repair and fabrication facilities, offices, living spaces for workers, life support, and a variety of other necessities for a typical shipyard. On the fleet’s sensors, all of those areas intended for human use looked dark and cold, kept just warm enough for equipment to function properly, or with all life support shut off, as frigid as empty space. The docks were lifeless by any biological definition, but power usage within provided clear signs of the mechanical “life” that ruled within them. “Like haunted houses,” someone whispered.

The warehouses resembled enormous beehives, rounded structures with external access and loading docks located all around them on different levels. The main cargo off-loading docks were at the top and bottom of the warehouses to allow new material to be distributed throughout the structure using very large cargo elevators in the core.

Each of the docks and warehouses also boasted a single propulsion unit whose thrust could produce a significant change in their orbits given enough time. It was an expensive addition to such facilities, but if the Alliance fleet had been able to launch a bombardment from light-hours away, the structures would have had ample time to make the relatively small alterations in their orbits that would cause the bombardment projectiles to completely miss their targets. However, with Geary’s warships planning on launching so close to their targets and the rocks moving so fast, in this case the propulsion units would be totally useless.

The size and numbers of the structures rivaled that of a major shipbuilding region of space in a wealthy star system. If the Alliance had been forced to retreat here, these structures would have allowed the Alliance to continue to launch raids on the Syndic conquerors.