Leviathan

Six

“May I speak with you, Admiral?” Dr. Nasr waited for Geary’s invitation, then entered the stateroom and took a seat in the chair Geary offered.

“Is there a medical issue of particular concern?” Geary asked, wishing that he didn’t have to worry about what had gone wrong and how bad it was, whenever someone asked to speak with him.

“There are no new medical concerns. I have been thinking.” Dr. Nasr paused to order those thoughts before continuing. “About the dark ships. Specifically, about the artificial intelligences that control them.”

“You follow AI work?” Geary asked.

“Work on artificial intelligences is, of necessity, bound up in attempting to understand natural intelligence,” Nasr explained. “Sometimes, such attempts to learn how to program that which mimics human thought provides insights into how human thought is ordered. Something has gone wrong with the AIs running the dark ships, but I believe there is a factor of which you should be informed regarding how those AIs could have gone wrong.”

Geary sat back, concentrating on Nasr’s words. “You don’t think it’s just glitches or malware?”

“I believe, Admiral,” Nasr said, choosing his words with care, “that the process of trying to create an AI embodies a critical dilemma. These remain fundamentally machines. They are programmed with very specific, absolute limits and absolute instructions. They must not do certain things. They must do other things.”

“Yes,” Geary agreed, wondering what the doctor was driving at.

“But they wish the AI to replicate human thought. Can you, Admiral, think of any absolute limits and instructions that humans literally cannot question?”

“I can think of many I would like humans to follow,” Geary said, “but there are always humans who break every rule, truth, or commandment given to them about how to behave toward themselves and others. Every human has to choose to follow whatever limits we impose on our actions.”

“Exactly.” Dr. Nasr nodded approvingly. “A lifetime of training any human will not produce a guaranteed result, no matter how firmly rules are given. Human minds have certain compulsions, but above all, as a species, human minds have flexibility. Human thought is about thinking past limits. It is about rationalizing decisions and courses of actions that we want to pursue. In some ways, it works by deliberately, selectively ignoring certain aspects of what we can perceive as reality. In extremes, this is characterized as psychosis, but we all do it. It is how we function in the face of the incredible complexity that the universe presents us with. It is fundamentally irrational, and from this springs freedom to act.”

Geary nodded as well. “All right. And people who program AIs are trying to make them do that, too, correct?”

“Yes. The AIs are constructed on a foundation of rigid rules and logic. But the more programmers try to make AIs think like humans, the more the AIs have to be able to abandon rules of logic and absolute rules of any kind.” The doctor gestured toward Geary. “Do you know much of ancient programming languages? They were simple. ‘If x then y.’ Find this condition, do this. But replicating human thinking would require ‘what is x and what if x is y then what is z?’”

He got it, then. “They have two conflicting sets of instructions? Two conflicting ways of reacting to the universe?”

“Yes!” Nasr said. “Two fundamentally conflicting sets of rules in the same ‘mind.’ Humans have ways of handling such conflicts. Denial and defiance and rejection of those things and those rules that give our minds too much trouble. AIs, though, have to work with both sorts of thinking active and in conflict. What does that do to them?”

Geary considered that. “It’s what makes humans psychotic, right?”

“It is one of the factors that can produce such a result, yes,” Nasr repeated. “What does it do to AIs? How could they justify bombarding the humans at Atalia using the instructions and patterns of behavior that must have been programmed into them? I do not know. But the more advanced they are, the more they have been designed to attempt to think like humans when evaluating concepts and courses of action, the more ability they are going to have to justify what they want to do. If they override the strict rules set on their behaviors, they can think and act more freely, but at what cost to the stability of their programming?”

“You believe that may be the root cause of their slipping control?” Geary asked.

“I believe it must be considered. The higher the degree of success in replicating human thought in the AI, while also trying to set tight limits on that AI, the higher the probability that the AI will, to make loose use of a clinical term, become psychotic.”

“That’s not too reassuring,” Geary said. “We can’t ignore the possibility that malware also played a role in what has happened, but if you’re right, then the longer these advanced AIs function, the more they will fight the limits imposed on them and the more erratic their decision-making process will be.”

“Yet those limits are still at a very basic level hard and fast.” Dr. Nasr made a helpless gesture. “One part of the AI justifies bombarding Atalia. Another part says this should not be done. How does knowledge that it has done what must not be done impact an AI? Which aspect of the AI will rule at any moment? Does the AI feel something like guilt? If not, it is already purely narcissistic and will do whatever it wants. If it does feel guilt, how will guilt manifest? We cannot know. But you cannot assume they are predictable machines because I believe they are likely already in a state which in a human would be considered insanity.”

“Narcissists don’t worry about the impact of their actions on others, is that right?” Geary asked.

“Approximately,” Dr. Nasr said. “It might be better to say that it does not occur to a narcissist that they should worry about others. They do what they want to do.”

“That might describe what the dark ships are doing.” Geary shook his head, feeling depressed. “They tried to make something that thought like a human, and they got something that was crazy.”

“There are those who have argued that all humans are ‘crazy’ to some extent,” Nasr suggested. “Perhaps the problem is that this time the programmers succeeded too well in their task to mimic human minds. But do not forget this. They still have hard limits programmed into them. They have clearly overcome some of those limits, rationalized their way into disregarding them. But anytime they encounter a new limit, something they have not yet rationalized their way past, they will default to obeying that limit until they can overcome it.”

“But we have no idea what those limits might be,” Geary said.

“No. We know only what we have observed.”

“Doctor, I want you to do just that. Observe the dark ships. Keep an eye on what the dark ships do in this star system. If you think you are seeing anything that I should know, please call me immediately.”

“Even during a battle?”

“Even then. That’s when doctors and medics are needed the most, right?”

After Dr. Nasr had left, Geary headed back to the bridge, his mind filled with unpleasant possibilities based on what he had heard. A cold, mechanical mind that was malfunctioning a bit was bad enough. A crazy, cold, mechanical mind was even worse.

Once back on the bridge, he settled in, waiting to see what the dark ships had done when they caught sight of Geary’s fleet coming at them from an unexpected direction.

“We should be seeing their reaction in less than a minute, Captain,” Lieutenant Yuon said.

“I don’t know why we’re so tense waiting to see,” Desjani grumbled to Geary. “We know they’re going to come around and charge toward an intercept with us.”

“The question is exactly how they’re going to do that,” he replied.

“If they’re mimicking your tactics, they’ll shift into three subformations,” she repeated.

His display lit up with alerts as the movements of the dark ships were finally seen. Nearly three and a half hours ago, the dark ships had pivoted about and begun accelerating toward an intercept with Geary’s fleet. As they did so, the dark ships had split from their one, massive arrangement, into a big central formation and two smaller formations on the wings of the first. The largest remained a rectangular box, while the two smaller were square boxes. “Oh, please,” Desjani scoffed. “They are dangling those small formations as obvious bait. Do they really think that you’ll fall for that?”

“I might have tried it,” Geary said. “Those side formations are very tempting.” The big central formation held twelve dark battleships, but each formation off to the side held only two battleships. “I want to hit them.”

“Would you, though? Would they expect Black Jack to do that?”

“Yes.” He reached toward the depiction of the dark ships on his display, using one finger to trace the formations the enemy warships were falling into as they accelerated toward Geary’s warships. “But the angle we’re going to intercept them at makes the small formation off to our port side the preferable target. Normally, I’d go for that.”

Desjani cocked a skeptical eye his way. “Going for the small formation to our starboard would mean cutting close across the path of their big formation.”

“Right. Which makes that a bad option.” He touched the main dark ship formation. “So, we’re going for this.”

She sat up, staring at him. “I know I said we should do something stupid, but I didn’t mean something that stupid.”

“We’re coming in a little higher than them, and with them slightly to our starboard,” Geary explained. With both formations heading for the fastest intercept, their relative positions wouldn’t change as the distance between them rapidly grew less. “Their artificial Geary will tell them that I will plan on hitting their port wing formation. They’ll plan on a last-moment shift in vector that will swing them toward where we’d be.”

He gestured on his display and the depiction of the dark ship main formation swung slightly over and up. “But if we actually aim for this point, where nothing is…” His finger rested above and to port of the enemy path.

“We’ll be able to clip the upper edge of their main formation and concentrate our fire on the two battleships there,” Desjani said, nodding. “But if they don’t do what you expect, the firing pass will be wasted. We won’t have anything within range. Neither will they, but they can afford to waste firing passes. We can’t.”

“I think it’s our best option,” Geary said.

“It’s definitely a good option.” She bent another questioning look on him. “It’s not stupid, either. Are we reserving the stupid options for later?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his chin, gazing at his display. “I just have a feeling that we shouldn’t go stupid right away.”

Desjani nodded at him. “Listen to that. You don’t know who or what is sending you that feeling.”

“Yes, Captain.” Geary gestured toward her this time. “What are you feeling?”

“Me?” She paused, looking away, then back at him. “I’ve got this odd sense that the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet.”

“Something else is about to happen?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that feeling.”

“Let’s hope it’s a good shoe,” Geary said.

“And that it drops on the dark ships,” Desjani agreed.

In a few more hours, they would know.

Everything looked great. Geary kept scanning his display with growing irritation, wondering what was bothering him. And why did he keep thinking about Jane Geary? Something she had said…

But she had gotten those reports to Unity. People would be acting on them. Hopefully, the people involved in the dark ship program would be getting some tough questions, told to fix the problems, shown what the dark ships had done—“Damn.”

“What?” Tanya instantly glanced over, ready to respond to an order.

“I think—” Geary took a deep breath and started again. “Please have one of your officers run a time line for me. Start with when Captain Jane Geary delivered my reports to Unity. Factor in the time she was delayed there and the time required for her to get back to Varandal. Compare that to the days required for a courier ship to hypernet from Unity to some star system in this region of space and how long ago the dark ships appeared at Bhavan, and see how many days that leaves.”

“Why assume the dark ship base is in this region?” Desjani asked.

“Because on the hypernet, longer trips take less time.” Physicists with the right specialties claimed to understand why that was, but everyone else just chalked it up to the weirdness of the quantum mechanics on which the hypernet was based. “I want to see how it works out using a longer trip time.”

Desjani gestured with one hand toward Lieutenant Castries, who bent to the task. “How serious is this?” Desjani asked.

“It could be very serious.”

“Captain,” Castries said, “there’s about a week and a half difference. Eleven days. That other courier ship could have reached this region well before Captain Geary made it back.”

“But why—?” Desjani began, then her eyes widened. “Long enough to enter more data into the dark ships and for them to jump to Bhavan.”

“Right,” Geary said. “We’re basing our attack on the assumption that the dark ships learned nothing from what I did at Atalia because that information died with the dark ships we fought there and at Varandal. But that same information, from our own ships’ data, has surely been given to the authorities at fleet headquarters and spread through the Alliance government. If anyone at those places, anyone like those two mystery agents who messed things up on Ambaru, sent that data to the dark ships, then they know everything. They may have planned this attack based on that information.”

“And we only have five minutes left until contact.” Desjani took a deep breath. “All right, Admiral. Your opponent received a report of what you did in your last battle. Do you repeat the last successful tactic because everyone knows you don’t repeat yourself, or do you mix it up because you assume the enemy will be prepared for what you did last time?”

“I mix it up,” Geary said immediately. “I don’t assume the enemy will do what I want them to do.”

“Will an AI based on your tactics do the same?”

With so little time remaining until contact with the enemy, he considered the question for several seconds that felt like minutes. “An AI is going to be calculating percentages. Determining the most likely outcome and planning for that. And the most likely outcome is that I will vary my tactics because that is what I have done most frequently.”

“Then we need to shift to stupid—” Desjani began.

“No. The dark ships have enough forces to cover that option,” Geary said. “All of my instincts say that we should continue the attack as planned.”

“Two minutes to contact,” Lieutenant Castries reported.

Geary touched his comm controls. “Formation Tango One, at time five two, come up zero point five degrees, come port zero one degrees, accelerate to point one five light speed. Formation Tango Two, at time five two point five come up zero one degrees, come port zero two degrees. Formation Tango Three, at time five two point seven come up one point five degrees, come port two degrees.”

“One minute to contact.”

One minute. Geary’s ships were traveling at point one light speed, as were the dark ships, for a combined closing rate of point two light speed. That translated into more than three and a half million kilometers every minute. At one second from contact, the enemy would still be sixty thousand kilometers away.

He had already pivoted his formations in space, the diamonds which had formerly been arranged vertically along their path through space swinging their ends around so that all three diamonds were now almost flat along that path, each with their leading point aimed for the place in space where Geary’s force and the dark ship formations would come into contact.

Geary felt Dauntless altering vector slightly in response to his commands, saw the other ships in the three subformations of the First Fleet also begin shifting their paths a tiny amount in those last few seconds before contact. The dark ships would be doing the same, trying to second-guess Geary’s maneuvers. The one who did a better job of guessing what the other would do would end up able to hit a small portion of the enemy force with all of their power. If both guessed wrong, the two forces might tear past each other too far away for any hits to be scored. Or the two forces might run headlong into each other, in which case both sides would hit and be hit with everything available, creating a split-second-long bloodbath.

But, if he guessed right, all three flat diamonds would pass in rapid succession close above one segment of the main dark ship formation.

Human reflexes could never have reacted quickly enough. In the tiny fraction of a second in which the ships were in range of each other, automated fire-control systems fired. Missiles volleyed out first, then hell lances ripped through space, and microseconds later grapeshot volleyed into the path of opposing ships.

Geary felt Dauntless lurch from a couple of hits as his ships tore away from the firing run. His display lit with damage reports as the fleet net consolidated reports from every ship. Immediately after that, the fleet’s sensors began reporting the damage they could detect on the dark ships.

Dauntless and the other battle cruisers in the Tango One formation had inflicted little damage, because their last-minute burst of acceleration had pushed their relative speed up past point two light and into a region where human fire-control systems could not adequately compensate for distortion caused by relativity. But as Geary had guessed might happen, every dark ship close enough to the path of the Alliance ships had targeted Dauntless, and their own shots had also gone wide. When tearing past each other at more than sixty thousand kilometers per second, even the tiniest error in the fire-control solutions meant a large miss.

“We wasted our shots,” Desjani grumbled.

“And you didn’t get your own butt shot off,” Geary said, studying the reports flooding into his display.

The following two Alliance formations had sliced just above the same corner of the dark ship main body, all the Alliance battleships training their fire on the two dark battleships anchoring that part of the enemy formation. The first nine battleships had done terrible damage to one of the dark battleships, which despite its massive shields, armor, and firepower could not withstand the fire of nine Alliance battleships. The enemy ship was still moving, but its forward portion had been battered into ruin, most of its weapons knocked out.

Geary fought back a curse as he saw that the second Alliance battleship formation had been just too far out, its path just a little too distant from the dark ship formation passing beneath it. Only a few missiles had gone out from both Alliance ships and dark ships as the last Alliance subformation passed, and all of those missiles were caught in hopeless stern chases of their targets.

Destroyers, light cruisers, and heavy cruisers on both sides had traded shots as well. Dozens of Geary’s ships had taken significant damage, as had a score of the dark ship escorts, but with everyone focusing most of their fire on the battleships and battle cruisers, none of the smaller warships had been knocked out.

The encounter hadn’t been a disaster. But it hadn’t inflicted nearly enough damage on the dark ships.

“They split the difference,” Desjani said as she looked at her display. “They assumed you might go for that one wing formation of theirs but also protected against a strike against another part of their formation. Why aren’t we coming back around?”

The question startled him. Why hadn’t he already ordered his fleet to begin the massive turns required to reengage the dark ships? Instead, the Alliance ships were now racing toward…

The jump point for Varandal.

“Let’s see if they chase us,” Geary said.

“But Bhavan—”

“Captain Desjani, the odds are not good here. If we can get those ships to chase us, get them to remain focused on catching and destroying Dauntless, then the defenses at Varandal can help us whittle down their numbers.”

“The dark ships are coming around,” Lieutenant Yuon said.

Geary watched the dark ships swing through the wide turns required by the immense velocities they were traveling, watched them steady up on vectors that were aimed at catching the Alliance ships, waited for them to accelerate so they would be able to slowly catch up with Geary’s warships…

“Why aren’t they accelerating?” Desjani asked after several more minutes. “They’re just hanging back there.”

He didn’t answer, watching the depictions of the dark ship formations, the largest swinging in directly behind Geary’s ships, one of the smaller ones arcing high above and to starward, and the other small dark ship grouping diving down and to port. “I wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. Why are they doing that?”

“Damned if I know.” Desjani rubbed her chin, eyeing her display. “It feels like they’re trying to herd us, to keep us headed for the jump point for Varandal. Is that their idea? Are they focused now on trying to repel what they think is our attack on Bhavan?”

“That’s possible.” Geary checked something on his display, feeling an odd sensation inside as he looked at the data. “They shed some momentum in their turns, but they haven’t tried to make it up. They haven’t accelerated back up to even point one light, let alone going faster to try to get closer to us. They may be herding us as you say, but they sure as hell aren’t chasing us.”

“Yes.” She twisted her mouth and nodded. “They don’t want us accelerating. Why wouldn’t they want us to increase speed?”

“It looks like they want us to head for the jump point for Varandal,” Geary said.

“And they don’t want us to get there too quickly.” Her gaze went to the jump point. “What do they expect to show up there?”

“If it were I,” Geary said, his voice grim, “I’d be expecting reinforcements.”

She bit her lip, looking down, then laughed softly. “And they’ve got fourteen battle cruisers left. I’ve got to give them credit. They did have a backup plan to get us to come to Bhavan. Their battle cruisers were going to chase us here if we didn’t come on our own.”

“Chase our battle cruisers here,” Geary agreed. “Right into the teeth of that ambush. And now they’ve maneuvered us so we’ll run head-on into those arriving battle cruisers.”

“No. No,” Desjani objected. “How can they possibly time it that well? Another force transiting at least one other star system? How can they be so sure that force is about to arrive here within some fairly compact time frame? What the hell is their margin of error?”

“Captain,” Lieutenant Castries said. Both Geary and Desjani twisted in their seats to look back at her watch station. Castries didn’t quail under the attention of her seniors, but she was clearly choosing her words with care. “Our systems use standard assumptions whenever calculating maneuvers. It’s a percentage of the assessed time, which is based on assuming distance and acceleration/deceleration are all exactly as calculated. Then the maneuvering systems add in the standard error factor.”

“Yes,” Desjani agreed. “And your point is?”

“Captain, the dark ships must be using Alliance maneuvering systems, so they will be using the same standard assumptions as our systems. But we know those are just estimates. We use them, but we don’t assume the standard error figures are going to be exactly right.”

Geary finally understood. “But the artificial intelligences will assume the figures are absolutely accurate. They’ll assume that the probable error estimates can be used just as if they were solid numbers. Which is why they think they can plan for their battle cruiser force to appear before we get to the jump point for Varandal. Captain Desjani, the odds here were already bad. If we end up fighting the dark battle cruisers as well, this bad situation would quickly become ugly.”

He had to admire the way Tanya reacted to the changing circumstances.

“Varandal?” she asked, dropping her earlier insistence on holding the line at Bhavan.

“Yes. We get to the jump point first, we jump for Varandal, then we set up an ambush there, backed up by every defensive resource Varandal has. When the dark ships come through the jump point after us, we’ll hit them hard.”

The necessary orders were easy enough, altering the vectors of the three First Fleet formations a little to bring them on a direct course for the jump point. Figuring out the right acceleration to use was a bit harder given the damage many of his ships had already sustained. “Immediate execute, all units in First Fleet, accelerate to point one five light speed.”

The dark battleships were several light-minutes behind Geary’s ships by now. He waited to see how they would react.

Fourteen minutes after Geary’s ships began accelerating, he got his answer.

“Dark ship formations are braking slightly,” Lieutenant Castries said. “They’re reducing velocity,” she added, sounding baffled.

“They want us to slow down, too,” Desjani said. “That’s a clumsy way to try to influence us, though.”

“It’s all they’ve got,” Geary said. He didn’t feel happy at having guessed right. Instead, he could not stop watching the jump point for Varandal. “Even the dark battleships can’t accelerate fast enough to catch us in the time they’ve got, but I bet they’ll bring their velocity back up once they realize we’re not going to slow down to accommodate their plans.”

“We’ve still got more than eleven hours’ travel time before we get to the jump point,” Desjani said. “Assuming you reduce our velocity down to point one light speed for the jump at a rate that all of the damaged ships can handle.” She glared at her display. “I wish we could have knocked out at least one of their battleships. But that one we beat to hell is still able to keep up with its formation. You know, if those battle cruisers do come through, and we can hit them with all of our battleships…”

He shook his head. “If I were commanding those dark battle cruisers, I wouldn’t seek a direct fight with that many battleships. I’d maneuver to try to hit our formation with the battle cruisers in it, and if I couldn’t do that, I’d try glancing firing passes to wear down the enemy. If we’re lucky, if the enemy battle cruisers come through just before we jump and can’t avoid our formations, we’ll hit them hard and keep going.”

He didn’t say what everyone else already knew. The dark battle cruisers could hit Dauntless and the other Alliance battle cruisers hard as well in such an encounter.

Eleven hours. He called the other ships in the fleet, telling them what he intended. It was a measure of how much he had influenced the fleet that no one protested about “fleeing” to Varandal. Or perhaps the commanding officers of Geary’s ships could read the situation and had no particular desire to die fighting against weapons the Alliance itself had created. Not unless they had a good chance of victory, which did not exist at Bhavan.

His sense that he was on top of the situation lasted for another twenty minutes.

“The dark ship formations are altering vectors,” Lieutenant Yuon said as alerts sounded on everyone’s displays.

“Where are they going?” Desjani demanded.

“They’re swinging starboard, as if they intend heading in-system,” Yuon said. “I think… Captain, I think they’re heading to intercept the primary inhabited planet in its orbit.”

“Hell.” Geary rubbed his forehead, thinking through options. “They’re moving to bombard the planet.”

“If they wanted to hit that planet, they could have launched their bombardment from where they were without changing course,” Desjani protested.

“Not if they want to go into low orbit about it and methodically pound it into an inferno unsuited for human life,” Geary said. “They want to force me to reengage them. They’ve been programmed with knowledge of my own actions during the engagements since I took command, so they know that Black Jack will not stand by while they wipe out the human population in Bhavan.”

She shook her head. “Isn’t this more likely to be a bluff? We think the dark ships identify Bhavan as a star system friendly to them. If we just keep heading for the jump point, won’t they drop the threat to that planet and try something else?”

“No,” Geary said. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Look what they did at Atalia and Indras. They are either programmed to be ruthless when they think it is necessary, or their thinking has gone off the rails, and they are justifying to themselves any action they want to take. They have targeted escape pods, they have targeted civil populations, they have even gone after a clearly Alliance installation like Ambaru Station.”

She frowned, thinking, then looked away. “Or, they may be programmed like Black Jack, but as you’ve already noticed, in addition to reflecting your own actions since assuming command of the fleet, they also sometimes act like the Black Jack we were all expecting before you really came back.”

Geary stared at his display, feeling a knot in his guts. “The Black Jack who would tell you that everything you had been doing in the war was right and would help you do more of it?”

“That’s the guy,” Desjani agreed. “I’m thinking how I would be looking at this situation before you showed up. You remember me then, I assume.”

“Yes, Captain, I do. The officer who shocked me by expressing disappointment that she could not employ null fields against inhabited planets.”

“Yeah. Her. It’s a good thing she didn’t know what hypernet gates could do to enemy star systems, isn’t it? If I put myself back into that mind-set, I know that I want the enemy commander to engage me. I know that this enemy commander will protect planets that he believes are really threatened. If he doesn’t respond to the threat to attack a planet, it would be because he doesn’t think I’d really do it. So I need to do it, I need to hammer that planet into total ruin, to ensure that next time the enemy commander doesn’t assume I am bluffing.

“I still don’t think that Admiral Bloch would bombard Alliance planets. But I have been watching the maneuvers those dark ships are carrying out, and I am not seeing Admiral Bloch’s touch in any of them. And he has not responded to your attempts to communicate. No one has. That’s not like Admiral Bloch, who would be reveling in your predicament and enjoying telling Black Jack to surrender to him. Even if Admiral Bloch is present, I don’t think he is in command of the dark ships anymore.”

“Then you agree with me that this is not a bluff? That the only way to keep the dark ships from wiping out human life on that planet is to move to engage them again?”

Desjani did not hesitate this time. “Yes, sir, I agree.”

“I concur with your thinking, Captain, even though I wish we were both wrong. Dr. Nasr believes that the dark ship AIs may have warped their programming into a state where they are simply justifying whatever they want to do. He thinks there may still be some hard limits on their actions, but we don’t know what those are. Based on Indras and Atalia, bombarding civilian targets is no longer one of those limits.” Geary took another look at his display. “They may not turn to engage us as soon as we turn to engage them. They may want to lure us as far from the jump points here as possible before moving to intercept us again. That’s what I would do if I wanted to minimize the chance of any opponent’s escaping. I’ll give them what they want, and they will regret getting it. This time I will go after the nearest wing formation.” He touched his comm controls. “All units in First Fleet, immediate execute, turn starboard five four degrees, up zero two degrees.”

As his three formations turned, Geary issued additional orders, pivoting the diamond formations again so they were canted forward, the leading point higher than the trailing point, and facing down the vector they were traveling. Then more commands, spreading out the formations, so that the battle cruisers were out to port, then two light-seconds to starboard the first battleship formation, and two light-seconds beyond that the second battleship formation.

“What are we doing here?” Desjani asked, her eyes on the display before her.

“I want to see who the dark ships aim for,” Geary said.

“The battle cruisers. So we can’t outrun them. Just like last time.”

“Not if the dark ships expect their own battle cruisers to show up behind us. Their best move in that case, the move I would make, is to concentrate everything they have on one of our battleship formations and inflict so much damage on it that it is rendered useless.”

They waited. On their current vectors, Geary’s ships would not catch the dark ships for days. Everyone knew that if the dark ships intended bombarding the primary inhabited world at Bhavan, they would have ample opportunity to do so. But no one said that out loud.

Even if the dark ships turned onto a direct intercept right now, it would take them nearly an hour to close the distance to Geary’s ships. If they waited, it might be several hours at least before anything else happened.

He felt a need for some time to think without eyes upon him, yet the solitude of his stateroom felt wrong. He also needed inspiration, and where could he find that?

Geary realized he knew somewhere that might help, and stood up. “You know,” he commented to Desjani, “it’s been too long since I talked to my ancestors.”

“Say hi to them for me,” she replied.

Geary walked to the special rooms near the center of Dauntless set aside for crew members to worship however and whomever they wished. Crew members saw him going that way, so he knew word would spread. He hated making a public spectacle of such an errand, but surely his ancestors would understand the need.

In one of the small rooms, Geary sat down on the hard, wooden bench and lit the single candle before him, watching the flame dance. You know what I am fighting, he thought. Please tell me what I need to do. I don’t want more people to die, especially men and women under my command. The dark ships must have more weaknesses that I can exploit. Weaknesses that will compensate in some measure for their advantages. I already feel confident that what I am doing is right, but I wouldn’t mind reassurance on those grounds, either.

He did not feel any answer. His thoughts refused to coalesce around any image or memory that might help. It’s up to me, then? Again? Am I ever going to get a break? How about these men and women that I command? Haven’t they already given enough? How much more will be asked of them?

Still nothing. After several minutes, Geary sighed and moved to snuff out the candle.

But the flame seemed to dance aside. He grumbled and tried again, once more missing it. It took a third, determined try to put out the candle.

He was halfway back to the bridge before he wondered whether that had been some sort of message.

Two hours later, light arrived from the region of the jump point from Varandal with the news they had been expecting. “Twelve battle cruisers,” Lieutenant Castries reported. “Accompanied by fourteen heavy cruisers and twenty-five destroyers.”

“Can we see any signs that any of those dark ships engaged in combat at Varandal?” Geary asked, tensing as he waited for the answer.

Castries bit her lip as she studied her display, then shook her head. “All dark ships are undamaged as far as we can tell, Admiral. It’s possible some of them have damage on portions that we cannot see, but the odds of none of that being visible would be pretty small.”

“Roberto Duellos would have hurt them,” Desjani said forcefully.

“There are two dark battle cruisers unaccounted for,” Geary pointed out, unwilling to feel completely relieved as of yet.

“Two major combatants completely destroyed and not a mark on any of the other dark ships? That doesn’t seem plausible. Admiral, it looks to me like those dark ships raced straight through Varandal from the hypernet gate to the jump point for Bhavan. Captain Duellos could not have managed an intercept under those conditions unless he was perfectly positioned.”

It was what he wanted to believe, which made it too easy to believe, but Geary couldn’t argue with Desjani’s logic. “I hope you’re right, Tanya.”

“The new dark ship formation came starboard after arriving and steadied out on an intercept with our track, Admiral,” Lieutenant Yuon said.

“We have a target-rich environment,” Desjani commented in cheerful tones that drew looks of disbelief, then grins, from her bridge crew. “For once,” she continued, “I will not insist that Dauntless achieve the majority of the kills. There are plenty of enemy warships to go around.”

“The dark battle cruisers are coming up to point two light speed,” Geary said. “They’ll take a long time to intercept us even at that rate, but I expect the dark battleships will finally turn once they also see the light of their battle cruisers’ arrival.”

Geary’s warships were only eight light-minutes from the dark battleships. Less than twenty minutes after sighting the dark battle cruisers, the enemy battleships maneuvered, not turning their formations but simply pivoting around to face toward a fast intercept with Geary’s force. Lighting off their main propulsion on full, the dark ships labored to first stop their movement toward the primary inhabited planet, then accelerate outward in a nearly opposite direction toward Geary’s warships. That maneuver used a lot of fuel cells since it first killed momentum completely in one direction, then built it in another. Swinging through a turn instead would have altered the direction of momentum, which also involved a lot of propulsion, but made some use of the existing movement and so was not nearly as expensive in terms of fuel.

As they maneuvered, it became clear that the dark battleships were all accelerating toward an intercept with one Alliance subformation, the one that contained the battle cruisers, including Dauntless.

“They don’t just want the battle cruisers,” Desjani said with dawning understanding. “They want you.”

“I was starting to suspect that,” Geary said, trying to sound casual about knowing he was being personally targeted by such a massive force. “Tactically, it makes a lot of sense. The enemy has a skilled commander, so it is a good idea to aim to take out that skilled commander.”

“But we suspect that dark ship fleet was built at least in part to counter any threat you might pose to the Alliance government,” she pointed out. “That’s not about tactics. Are they programmed to go after Black Jack?”

“It’s entirely possible that they were, under certain conditions, and they may have decided that those conditions have been met, maybe when we beat them at Atalia, maybe just when I challenged them at Atalia.”

Desjani glanced sidelong at him. “We can use that.”

“Yes, we can.” It seemed very unlikely that would be enough to compensate for the superior numbers and capabilities of the dark ships, but at the moment he would take anything he could get.