Jack Campbell - Leviathan

That sank in. Invincible was not simply a distraction. She would also be a sacrifice. “Ancestors forgive us. The knowledge that ship holds, the things we could have learned from it…”

“One more crime to lay at the feet of the idiots responsible for this,” Desjani said in a low, angry voice. “May the living stars give those criminals the fates they deserve. What will we do with the time that the Dancers and Invincible are giving us?”

“Save some lives, at least for now.” Geary gave orders, diverting scores of warships to collect and recover escape pods from the Alliance battleships, battle cruisers, cruisers, and destroyers that had been put out of action or destroyed. “As soon as we have recovered everyone, we’re going to rejoin Mistral and head for the outer reaches of the star system. Another jump point is going to appear eventually. We can’t use it, because we can’t leave any dark ships active to attack the Alliance. But Mistral can.”

Desjani gazed at him, then nodded somberly. “ Mistral has to get back. You may have to order some of the Marines aboard Mistral to hold a gun to Commander Young’s head to get her to leave the rest of us, though.”

He had a momentary image of what the rest of her life would be like for Commander Young, ordered to leave the rest, forced to leave the rest, but doomed to be forever remembered as the only one who had left Unity Alternate, the only one whose ship had survived the desperate battle at Unity Alternate. Geary was appalled as he realized that he would be ordering Young to a living nightmare that many would consider a fate worse than death. He wondered how long she could live with that, how long she would live with that.

But he knew he would have to order her to do it.

Geary called Mistral . “Commander Young, the fleet will be repositioning to the vicinity of the orbital governmental facility. You have one hour and ten minutes from the time of this transmission before we get there. Be ready to leave the dock and accompany the fleet at that time. Do not, repeat do not, leave anyone aboard that facility.”

The formations of the First Fleet, already rendered somewhat ragged by the combat losses they had sustained, had dissolved into a mass of individual ships darting about to collect escape pods and rescue the occupants. He did not have to supervise that. The fleet’s automated systems had no trouble figuring out which ship was best positioned to pick up which escape pod, could track when a ship had recovered as many survivors as that ship could safely carry, and could recommend to each commanding officer what to do next.

“It’s ironic,” Geary said as he watched the process. “Our automated systems are making it possible to recover all of the survivors as quickly and efficiently as we can. A lot of men and women will owe their rescue to that. But other automated systems destroyed their ships in the first place and will kill those men and women later if they can.”

“It’s just a matter of whether you’re ordering what to do based on what the systems say, or if they’re ordering you what to do whether you like it or not,” Desjani said. “There isn’t anything complicated about that.”

“There shouldn’t be,” Geary agreed.

The survivor recovery completed, Geary ordered his ships back into their formations, leaving the discarded escape pods drifting in space, and directed every warship to head back toward the government facility.

The dark ships were still swooping down on Invincible . The immense alien superbattleship was moving slowly away from the pursuing dark ships, plodding along under the thrust of the rows of fleet tugs that provided only a fraction of the power that Invincible ’s main propulsion units once employed.

Geary felt an odd sense of sorrow at the sight. Not the huge regret that the knowledge represented by the captured alien ship would be lost but sadness at watching the massive ship sacrifice itself to give the Alliance fleet a little time that might make all the difference in being able to destroy the last dark ship before the last Alliance ship. In its willingness to be destroyed for the sake of the human warships, the alien craft itself felt more human, more a living thing, than the dark ships with their AIs designed to mimic human thought processes.

The ship information graphics on the virtual display next to his command seat were filled with red and yellow markers indicating degrees of damage suffered by his warships, amidst too few greens that indicated ships without significant damage. The diversion provided by Invincible would buy a few hours, but what his fleet needed was six months in a major repair facility with a lot of docks.

The sort of facility, in fact, they had been forced to destroy here.

“We’ve got a little time,” Geary told Desjani. “I’m going to hold a senior officer conference.”

She ensured the privacy fields were activated, then Geary called his top officers, their images in their command seats on the bridges of their ships appearing around him. Captain Duellos. Captain Jane Geary. Captain Badaya. Captain Desjani in person. Captain Armus. The sight of those officers brought back with full force the fact that Captain Tulev should have been among them and was not.

Geary took a second to compose himself, to ensure his voice did not falter, before he spoke. “You all know the situation we are in. I would like to know your thoughts and your recommendations.”

Duellos replied in an uncharacteristically grave voice. “As was recently pointed out by a very fine officer who is no longer among us, we only have one option remaining. Fight to the last.”

“That’s right,” Badaya said. “To the last ship, to the last man or woman. Maybe we can’t wipe out the dark ships completely, but we can ensure that none of their battle cruisers and battleships survive this fight.”

“None of ours will either,” Armus said as if that were a matter not of sorrow but of inevitability. “But no one will be able to say we did not die with honor. No one will be able to accuse us of not doing our duty. We will be welcomed by our ancestors.”

“The last charge of the Gearys,” Jane said with the ghost of a smile. “I never thought I’d be part of Black Jack’s real last stand. It doesn’t feel as bad as I thought it would.”

“No one else has any other options to suggest?” Geary said.

Desjani shrugged. “We can’t wipe out the dark ships without paying a very high price. There are too many of them, they have too much firepower, they can maneuver better than we can, and the AIs running them aren’t your equal, but they are close enough to that given those other advantages the dark ships have.”

“It’s not like we could reposition through the hypernet gate, even if it weren’t blocked,” Badaya pointed out.

After being awakened from a century in survival sleep, it had taken Geary a while to understand why Badaya phrased it that way. After a century of war, with little hope of victory and in the face of ongoing awful losses, the Alliance fleet had clung fiercely to its pride, never talking about retreating but only about repositioning. The Alliance fleet might die fighting, it might “reposition” at other times, but it never “retreated.” Geary realized that that attitude, which these officers had all grown up with, made it easier for them to contemplate a last battle at this moment. As Desjani had reminded him, they had all expected to die long before this.

Duellos nodded in agreement with Badaya. “We can’t let the dark ships have access to the hypernet so they can carry out that Armageddon Option. They won’t leave as long as we’re still here fighting them, so we must stay and fight, even if we didn’t have to.”