Jack Campbell: Leviathan

He wondered why Rione had provided no details on her husband, why she didn’t look happy at having found him, but had no time to dwell on either issue.

“They haven’t found anything on the facility to help us,” Geary told Desjani. “They did find files that confirmed what Bloch told us.”

“The one time I wanted him to be lying, he wasn’t. Do we go get Mistral now?”

“It will be at least another hour before Mistral can get underway.”

Desjani frowned. “I just thought of something. You should tell Mistral to stay in that dock. She is safe there, safer than if she tries to rejoin us while the dark ships are conducting attack runs on us.”

“Good idea.” He called Commander Young. “Stay in the dock until we call you out. If none of our warships survive the action, we will have hopefully destroyed enough of the dark ships to allow Mistral to make her way home. The information and the people you carry must make it back to the Alliance.”

The dark ship formation with three surviving battle cruisers whipped by Revenge , inflicting a lot more damage but not shattering the massive battleship.

Captain Duellos, now in command of Gamma Two, caught those dark battle cruisers and tore one apart, but at the cost of Implacable taking so much damage that she had also lost maneuvering control and most of her weapons. “Power core unstable! Abandoning ship!” Commander Neeson sent. Escape pods leaped from Implacable as her crew sought safety.

The Dancers were harassing the larger dark battle cruiser formation, making rapid individual passes to pick off cruisers and destroyers. But they had lost five ships and were suffering increasing damage.

Implacable , still racing through space, abruptly exploded as her power core blew. There was no way of telling yet how many of her crew had made it off Implacable or whether Commander Neeson was among them.

Geary directed Desjani to hit the larger of the two dark battle cruiser formations again, the Alliance formation angling past one edge to knock out a couple of destroyers and inflict heavy damage on another dark battle cruiser. But in the process Daring and Victorious both took a lot of hits, and Dauntless suffered lesser but still-significant damage.

The battleships were coming around again, all of the dark ships concentrating on Gamma Four, while Gamma Three tried to swing over and down in time to support the other battleship formation. Geary wondered which Alliance warships would be lost or disabled this time, which men and women would die, as the beleaguered First Fleet fought what would likely be its final, remorseless battle.

A different alert sounded on Geary’s display, accompanied by an urgent pulsing highlighting the last object he had expected to be worried about in this star system or any other. The alien superbattleship captured from the Kicks. “What the hell is happening on Invincible ?”

Lieutenant Castries sounded even more baffled than Geary. “We are picking up indications that power sources are activating in multiple locations aboard Invincible .”

“ Multiple locations?” Desjani demanded.

“Yes, Captain, I don’t—”

“ Invincible has several power cores,” Geary said. “We weren’t sure why the Kicks designed it that way, but the engineers speculated it was because the ship was so huge that running power from any single location would have been harder than running multiple power sources. But those power cores were shut down! Every one of them was cold. Every piece of Kick equipment on that ship was shut down, deactivated, or disabled.”

“ Something is reactivating the power cores,” Desjani said. “I assume that we’re ruling out the Kick ghosts?”

“The Dancers explained that to us. There’s no actual presence. Just an impression of a presence.”

“Then what else—?” Desjani began. “Ancestors save us. Did those maniacs fit Invincible out as a dark ship?”

“She doesn’t have any working propulsion,” Geary replied. “We destroyed her main propulsion drives when we captured her, and we can see that they haven’t been repaired or replaced. What good would it do—”

“Combat systems are activating aboard Invincible ,” Lieutenant Yuon reported, sounding dazed. “According to what we’re picking up, it’s the Kick combat systems, not anything retrofitted from human sources. The targeting systems inside the ship and the few weapons that were still operational after we took Invincible are all coming online.”

“The tugs are powering up,” Lieutenant Castries said, disbelieving. “The heavy-hauling Alliance tugs mated to Invincible are activating their systems.”

“How far away is Invincible ?” Desjani glared at her display. “Twenty light-minutes. How long does it take to power up one of the fleet’s heavy tugs?”

“Our data says fifteen minutes from standby to emergency movement,” Castries replied. “They were in standby.”

“Then Invincible is probably already underway! What the hell is going on? Those tugs were cold and empty,” Desjani insisted. “No crews aboard. Are the dark ships doing this somehow?”

More alerts sounded, more visual alerts highlighted the same area. “Propulsion on the Alliance tugs fastened to Invincible has lit off at full. Invincible is underway,” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “No life support is active on the tugs.”

“Admiral!” It was General Charban, his image speaking with rapid precision to ensure his words were clear. “We have a message from the Dancers. I won’t read the poetry, just the gist of it. They’re telling us they have ‘reawakened’ the Kick superbattleship and that it is now ‘our distraction.’”

“Distraction?” Geary asked, then suddenly understood. “Diversion. The Dancers remotely reactivated the Kick systems?”

“I assume that’s what they mean,” Charban replied.

“How the hell did they do that?” Desjani asked.

“I don’t know,” Geary replied. “I don’t know why, if they can do that, they didn’t mess with the Kick systems when we were together fighting the Kicks.”

“And they remotely activated Alliance systems,” Desjani added, pointing to the tugs. “They must have remotely overridden access codes and authorization requirements and safety interfaces on the tugs. And now they’ve remotely lit off the tugs’ propulsion and set a vector for them. The Dancers may be allies of ours, but when did they develop that capability?”

“Admiral,” Lieutenant Yuon announced, now breathless. “All of the dark ship formations are turning away.”

Geary switched his gaze back to the dark ship formations, blinking in surprise at his display where vectors on the dark ships had begun swinging wildly. “They were turning for more intercepts and attacks on our formations. Now they’re coming about as fast as they can onto other vectors.”

“All of those other vectors are in the same general… they’re heading for Invincible ,” Desjani said, frowning as she studied her display. “I’m certain that’s how they’ll steady out. They are going after Invincible .”

“To the dark ships, Invincible must look like a huge threat even though she is nearly weaponless,” Geary said. “A literally huge threat. It must take priority over any other target as far as the dark ship AIs are concerned. A diversion. The Dancers gave us a diversion, something to get the dark ships off our backs for a short period.”

“A more-than-short period,” Desjani replied. “The dark ships are also about twenty light-minutes from Invincible , which is moving away from all of us. Just because of the distance involved, it will take the dark ships probably about an hour and a half to catch Invincible and more time to destroy her.”