Jack Campbell: Leviathan

Desjani gestured to the comm watch-stander, who hastily put together the conference message. “Ready, Captain. Circuit three.”

“Thank you,” Geary said, touching the necessary comm control. A real-time conference was out of the question with the ships separated by at least twenty light-minutes. Any message sent to them on wings of light would still take twenty minutes to get there, and the replies would require another twenty minutes to cross back. There were few things more annoying than a conversation in which at least forty minutes separated everything said and each reply.

“All units in the screening task force,” he began, “this is Admiral Geary. Your status updates indicate all of you have installed the software patch on all of your systems. It is critical that you keep those patches intact because otherwise all of your combat systems, sensor systems, and comm systems will be blinded to the dark ships and open to false messages.

“You will have all seen the reports from Atalia. These ships are not as maneuverable as those of the enigmas, but they are better than our ships. They are also individually much more heavily armed than our ships. Do not underestimate them.

“Captain Armus,” he addressed the commanding officer of the battleship Colossus , “it is likely that the dark ships will attempt to employ their five destroyers in suicide attacks on our battleships.” Was suicide attack the right term when it was an artificial intelligence that would “die”? “If the dark ships hold their current trajectory, I expect Warspite , Vengeance , and Resolution to be targeted, with two destroyers each going after two of the battleships and the remaining destroyer going after the third. We will attempt to hit those destroyers before they reach your screen.

“I am transmitting maneuvering orders to you now. The screen will contract toward the contact point with the dark ships, but not by much because of the ability of the dark ships to outmaneuver us. Captain Armus, if we succeed in taking out the destroyers prior to contact, do what you can to cripple or damage the dark battle cruisers and the last heavy cruiser remaining with them.”

He paused, his thoughts somber, then spoke again. “Even though the AIs controlling the dark ships appear to have been programmed using my tactics, these opponents are otherwise more alien than anything else we have encountered. They will fight without mercy or reason. They must be destroyed before they can inflict on Alliance star systems the kind of damage they did at Atalia. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”

Desjani, her chin resting on one hand, glanced over at him. “I used to think that about the Syndics.”

“What?”

“That they fought without mercy or reason. But you’re right. Compared to the dark ships, the Syndics are models of compassion and rationality. Even Syndics were capable of questioning their orders.”

He sighed and sat back, knowing that it would be three-quarters of an hour before he would see any reaction to his message. “Too many of them never did. The dark ships are still holding at point two light speed.”

“Conserving their fuel cells,” Desjani said. “If their destroyers are going to sprint the last distance, they’ll need everything they’ve probably got left. So, we’ve got about an hour and a half before the fireworks start, assuming we guessed right.”

“Have we heard anything more from Admiral Timbale?” Geary asked.

“Not a word. Nothing at all from Ambaru Station even though we sent them a warning as you directed. There’s a good chance those secret squirrel security goons who tried to muscle Admiral Timbale messed with the software patch.”

“Them or friends of theirs,” Geary agreed. “Following their orders. There was a word for that in a language on Old Earth. What was it… kadavergehorsam.”

“Ka-what?” Desjani demanded.

“It means ‘corpselike obedience,’” Geary explained. “The idea that subordinates should do exactly what they are told, unthinkingly, and only what they are told. One of the greatest strengths of humans is our ability to think, to adapt, but how many organizations have done their best to mold their people into unthinking drones?”

“Like the dark ships?” Desjani said. “The ultimate example of trying to create something that will only do what it’s told. But the software is so complicated, and so prone to glitches, and vulnerable to malware, that they’ve ended up acting on their own anyway. Hey, if those people on Ambaru have blocked the software patch because they are unthinkingly following their orders, it could mean they’ll die at the hands of something that is also supposed to be unthinkingly following orders.”

Geary nodded, his lips twisting at the ugly irony. “I’m sure if we could somehow question the dark ship AIs, they’d tell us they were only following orders.”

At forty-four minutes after his instructions had been sent, Geary finally saw movement among the screening forces. Some of the battleships swung about ponderously and began adjusting their positions in the screen to be closer to the place where the dark ships would penetrate. Most of the Alliance destroyers and light cruisers did the same.

But four squadrons of destroyers and two squadrons of light cruisers leaped out of the screen, accelerating toward the dark ships.

“Just what they’d expect,” Desjani murmured with satisfaction.

The two dark battle cruisers were running side by side. Trailing them was their sole heavy cruiser. Two dark destroyers ranged out slightly to one side, two were on the other side, and the fifth was slightly above. A far lesser tactician than Geary would have sent in escorts to try to shave off the dark ship escorts before contact with the screen. It was a predictable maneuver, and also in accordance with the doctrine Geary had learned a century ago. Doctrine he had reason to believe had also been programmed into the dark ship AIs.

He had set up this engagement, but could only watch it, still several light-minutes away and thus unable to communicate in time to control events. Everything he was seeing had already happened several minutes ago.

The Alliance light cruisers and destroyers charging toward the dark ships had drastically increased their rate of closure on the enemy. As they reached the right positions ahead of the dark ships, ranged above the track the dark ships were following, the Alliance warships pivoted and began both braking their velocity and swinging their trajectories downward to where the dark ships would pass.

Geary realized that the bridge of Dauntless had fallen silent as everyone waited to see who had outguessed whom.

“Yes!” Lieutenant Yuon whooped as the dark destroyers suddenly began accelerating at a rate no human-crewed warship could match, their main propulsion shoving them ahead of the dark battle cruisers and toward where the screen of battleships waited. “Sorry, Captain,” Yuon muttered as Desjani turned a withering glance his way for a second.

But Geary had felt the same exultation.

If his intercepting light cruisers and destroyers had been coming down to meet the advance of the battle cruisers, they would have completely missed the dark destroyers charging ahead, and instead found themselves tangling with the massively greater firepower of the dark battle cruisers.

But Geary’s orders had told his ships to bend their intercepts well short of the battle cruisers, to assume the dark destroyers would be out ahead and accelerating.

“Estimated relative velocity at contact will be two point three light speed,” Lieutenant Yuon reported in a painfully professional tone of voice as he tried to make up for his earlier outburst.