Jack Campbell - Leviathan

Geary wondered what point that effort would have had. Victory would have been impossible unless the Syndicate Worlds had been so badly stressed by winning that it fell apart and left an opening for the Alliance government to reoccupy the ruins of Alliance star systems. But by the time Geary had been reawoken after a century of war, there no longer appeared to be any point to most things about the war. Neither side believed they had any chance of winning, but the Syndicate Worlds would not stop attacking, and the Alliance would not surrender, and nothing else mattered, no other courses of action were considered possible.

He was about to destroy a symbol of that stubborn insanity.

A hail of bombardment projectiles launched from Geary’s warships, hurtling toward the vast structures designed to support ships like them but now dedicated to the dark ships.

The solid metal projectiles nicknamed rocks by fleet personnel had no warheads, no explosives, but were traveling at more than thirty thousand kilometers per second. Each carried an immense amount of kinetic energy, and when they struck anything, that energy was released.

Under the impacts of dozens of hits on every target, docks shredded, flying apart into clouds of large and small pieces. Warehouses exploded, those containing weapons or fuel cells vanishing in rapid successions of gigantic explosions as their contents self-detonated, their contents and their structures becoming a mass of small particles flung outward. In the space of seconds, structures built at immense cost in time, money, and labor were turned into a huge field of debris.

“No matter what happens to us here, it was worth it to blow away all that,” Desjani said, smiling at her display. “Someday, thousands of years in the future, that ring of debris will have spread to form a thin ring within this binary star system. That’s something to imagine, isn’t it?”

“An asteroid belt composed of the ruin of war,” Geary mused. “We’ll name it Tanya’s Ring.”

“A debris field big enough to form a belt in a star system, named after me? Now I can die happy.”

He glanced at her and confirmed the impression he had from Tanya’s tone of voice.

She wasn’t joking.

And with all five dark ship formations coming back at the Alliance ships again, and the hypernet gate still blocked, there seemed to be all too great a chance that it might happen before this day was out.

“Admiral,” Lieutenant Castries reported in amazement, “the fleet has detected a jump point for Hardinga.”

Geary checked his display. The jump point had popped into existence over five light-hours away, leading to a moderately-well-populated star system near this binary. Near as interstellar distances went, anyway. “How long—”

“It’s unstable,” Castries continued, then realized she had interrupted Geary. “I’m sorry, Admiral. Our sensors assess that the jump point is unstable. I’ve never seen that before.”

“You’ve never been in a close binary star system before,” Desjani said. “Look at that. Our sensors are estimating the jump point has an eighty percent chance of collapsing within seven hours of coming into existence.”

“And it came into existence five hours ago,” Geary said. “How can our systems estimate that sort of thing? The life span of an unstable jump point?”

“Somebody must have studied unstable jump points,” Desjani said. “Maybe remote observations from surrounding star systems that gave them some astronomical data to work with. Or maybe someone just ran the math for interactions of gravity fields for two stars, and that ended up in our ship systems as part of the baseline data for jump point analysis.”

“We couldn’t go anywhere anyway until we recovered Mistral ,” Geary said, “even if there was any chance of that jump point still being there by the time we got there.”

With the dark ships still about an hour from any possible intercepts, Geary checked the status of the Marines. The sooner they got their job done, the sooner he could focus exclusively on battling the dark ships.

The stacked tiles of virtual windows showing views from the Marine armor revealed what were now slightly time-delayed images, over a minute old due to the distance between the fleet and the government facility. The Marines were inside, some progressing without resistance down corridors and into rooms that mostly had a feeling of having never seen human presence since being constructed.

But other Marines were traveling into areas of the facility that had actually been used. There were signs of wear on walls and floors, occasional bits of trash that had so far evaded the small housekeeping robots, and here and there rooms bearing signs of hasty departure. Scattered clothing littered floors and furniture, abandoned snacks and meals rested on desks and tables, and unmade beds bore in the shape of the sheets traces of the people who had once used them.

“What happened to them?” Geary heard a Marine ask her platoon leader.

“Best guess is they ran for it, and their ship got nailed,” the officer replied. “Everybody look for signs any of this stuff has been disturbed since it was abandoned in place. We need to know if there is anyone left here.”

The lieutenant’s question was rudely answered seconds later as nearby Marines finally encountered opposition. Geary switched his view to one of those Marine officers, seeing a wide corridor ahead that was sealed by blast doors at the far end. “It’s automated defenses or someone directing fire,” a captain was reporting to his superior. “We can’t tell which yet.”

“Hold your positions. We’ve got units working around the flanks of this passage, and two platoons from Second Company on the next level down.”

Geary involuntarily jerked as bursts of fire came from the vicinity of the blast doors to lash the area where these Marines were hunkered down. “Can we return fire?”

“Not unless you see a target. Hold position.”

Switching his attention back to the big picture, Geary saw that Delta One’s battle cruisers were maintaining their position near the main Alliance formation, which was proceeding along a shallow curve that would eventually form an orbital path around Star Alpha if they stayed on it. The Dancers were nearly a light-minute away and above the Alliance warships, gathered into a group but not engaging in any of the playful maneuvering that they were famous for.

The five dark ship formations were all lined up to hit Geary’s formation, aiming for near-simultaneous intercepts along the path ahead. The earliest of those intercepts was forty-two minutes away.

“Ideas?” he asked Desjani.

“We need to know if there’s anything on the facility that will unblock that gate,” she replied. “If there is, we need to stall and wear out the dark ships like last time, which will be a lot harder this time. If there isn’t, we need to figure out how to close with them and kill more of them than they kill of us.”

“You’re recommending I avoid action until we know which tactics we need to follow?”

“Yes, sir,” Desjani said, nodding, her eyes on her display. “We’ve got at least fifteen minutes before we should maneuver to mess with their plans. Why don’t you see how the Marines and that woman are doing while I watch the overall situation?”

“Good idea.” He refocused on the Marine action.

Spotting some Marines proceeding cautiously up a set of emergency access stairs, Geary linked his view to the armor of their platoon leader. An enlisted Marine was kneeling at an access hatch, working on the lock, then gave his lieutenant a thumbs-up.

“We’re ready to go,” the lieutenant reported, her breathing deep and regular as she prepared for action.