Leviathan

Seven

Geary’s three diamond formations were heading in toward the star. Ahead of them, and slightly to starboard, were the three dark battleship formations. The main body of the dark ships in its rectangular box shape was accelerating fast onto a curving path through space that aimed for a direct intercept on Geary’s battle cruiser formation, the two smaller side formations closing in on the main body so that the three dark ship formations had almost merged into one long rectangle.

Nearly a light-hour behind Geary’s ships and a bit off to port were the twelve dark battle cruisers and their escort ships. The dark battle cruisers and the heavy cruisers and destroyers with them were accelerating for all they were worth and also steering on a vector that would eventually catch up to Geary’s formation.

“They don’t mind burning fuel cells like nobody’s business, do they?” Lieutenant Castries commented, then cast a hurried look at Captain Desjani as she realized she had spoken aloud. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

“It’s true,” Desjani replied. “Why do you think the dark ships are maneuvering in that fashion, Lieutenant?”

Castries hesitated as she thought through possible explanations. “There are a variety of profiles that our automated maneuvering systems are designed to adopt based on the situation,” she finally said. “Battle Priority profile places emphasis on completing maneuvers quickly and deemphasizes fuel cell usage levels because it focuses on achieving a quick, decisive victory. It appears that the dark ships are using Battle Priority as a default, perhaps because they see their ability to accelerate and maneuver better than our ships as a decisive advantage.”

“Not bad, Lieutenant,” Desjani said. “You are very likely correct. Where we modify our instructions to the maneuvering systems and sometimes override the automated preferences, the dark ships are forced to use purely automated controls that they may not question.” She looked back at Geary. “What are we going to do? Try to lure them into a lunge for Dauntless as we swing by again? It will be hard to set that up so we can get a decent number of hits, but we can try once more.”

“It’s too hard,” Geary said. “Time and numbers are not on our side. We can’t risk inconclusive firing passes, but if we cut a pass too close and get chewed up, we could lose this fight very quickly.”

“Maybe—”

“Hold on.”

Desjani ceased speaking instantly, turning a warning glare on the bridge watch-standers to ensure they also remained silent. Geary rarely cut her off, especially so abruptly. When he did, she knew it meant he was chasing an idea, something that was hanging on the edge of his consciousness but staying just out of sight.

The candle had offered a clue. Dodge aside from the enemy attacks. But battleships could not dodge battle cruisers. In order to set up conditions that would give him a chance to avoid getting hit too hard, Geary knew he would have to first inflict a major blow on the dark ships. But he couldn’t dodge and hit the dark ships hard. If only he could tear straight through the dark ship formation. But they would target Dauntless, they would aim every weapon at this battle cruiser, and—

Of course. They’ll aim at Dauntless. They’ll throw everything they’ve got at her. “I’m going to give them what they want,” Geary said. “A lot of clean shots at Dauntless.”

Desjani twisted her head rapidly to stare at him. “I’m waiting to hear the rest of the plan, Admiral.”

He pointed. “We go through here. The center of the dark ship formation. Not a glancing blow. We aim to go through them.”

Desjani nodded. “Then what, Admiral? Because the dark ships won’t plan any maneuvers if we come in aimed at that spot. They’ll know even if we make a last-second alteration of vector, we won’t be able to get clear of their weapons’ engagement envelopes.”

“Exactly. I want them targeted on Dauntless, and I want them waiting to get their shots. We’re going to refine what I told the heavy cruisers to do at Varandal.”

“Messing with the dark ships’ targeting priorities?”

“Exactly.” He indicated the other two formations of his fleet. “We’ll maneuver so that our battleship formations will be coming in at the same point in the dark ship formation, at the same time.”

“So our battleships can target the dark ships while they target Dauntless?” Desjani nodded again, her expression revealing no emotion. “It’s a smart plan. Which other ship will you be transferring to before that?”

“I’m staying aboard Dauntless.”

“No, you are not, Admiral! Because Dauntless will not survive that firing pass! There is no possible way, and you must survive. I recommend moving to Leviathan because Captain Tulev—”

“Tanya.” Geary pointed to his formations again. “The dark ships will target Dauntless. As long as Dauntless remains a priority target, they will not shift targets, and they will hold fire waiting to hit her. How long does it take our fire-control systems to reprioritize targets? About a second?”

“About that,” Desjani said. “Maybe a little longer. It depends on the complexity of the firing solutions and the relative velocity of the engagement.”

“My idea is to bring in our three formations so they intercept the dark ships as close to simultaneously as possible, but with the formation containing Dauntless a fraction of a second in the lead, and at the last possible moment accelerating our battleships so they switch lead with the battle cruisers, coming in a fraction of a second before Dauntless.”

She stared at him. “So the dark ships are holding their fire, waiting to hit Dauntless, while our battleships hit them a fraction of a second earlier?”

“Yes,” Geary said. “The dark ships don’t get their shots off because we hit them just before they fire.”

“Can you handle a maneuver like that?”

“No. But our maneuvering systems can, right? This is close to a straight-on intercept, without much deflection to worry about, and our three subformations are close together and moving along nearly the same vectors. Our automated maneuvering systems can make it work.” He paused. “I think it should work with the fire-control systems of the dark ships, which are identical to ours in every way that matters.”

“Why don’t we check on that?” Desjani gestured to Lieutenant Yuon. “Have Senior Chief Tarrani get in touch with me immediately.”

It took less than thirty seconds for Senior Chief Tarrani’s image to appear before Desjani. “Yes, Captain?”

“I’ve got a question about our fire-control systems, Senior Chief,” Desjani said. She explained Geary’s plan. “Can that work?”

Tarrani’s expression had shifted from puzzled to startled to admiring to considering. She took a few moments to answer. “Based on the way our fire-control systems work, Captain, the answer is yes. Keep the time differential down to less than a second, and the fire-control systems will not shift targets. They won’t change targeting priority based on that small an interval because recalculating time to fire and sending commands throughout the ship to shift weapon firing times takes just over one second. If we can cut the approaches of our three formations that fine, it will work. The dark ship fire-control systems will not reprioritize based on that small an interval.”

“You realize that you’re betting not just your butt but your life on that answer?” Desjani asked.

“Yes, Captain, I realize that. If you can make the maneuvering systems pull it off, then it will work. If it doesn’t work, it won’t be because I didn’t give you a good call on what the fire-control systems will do. It’ll be because the maneuvering systems screwed up their solutions.”

“I’ll see what Chief Busek says,” Desjani began.

“Uh, Captain, Chief Busek is pretty good, but she came up pretty fast because of the losses on her previous ships and those we took in engineering in the last year. Her experience is a bit limited,” Senior Chief Tarrani explained. “Yes, I’d ask her, but I’d also ask the person aboard the ship who has the most experience with maneuvering systems.”

“And that would be?” Desjani asked in the manner of someone who already suspected the answer.

“Master Chief Gioninni, Captain.”

“Naturally. Inform Master Chief Gioninni and Chief Busek that I need to hear from them immediately.”

Tarrani’s image vanished, to be replaced within a few seconds by the hefty figure of Master Chief Gioninni and the stick-thin shape of Chief Busek. Desjani once again explained what was intended. “Can the maneuvering systems make this happen?”

Chief Busek began to nod, paused, then glanced at Master Chief Gioninni. “Captain, I think the answer is yes, but I would like to hear the Master Chief’s opinion.”

Gioninni smiled with serene certainty. “We’re doing point one five light right now? And the enemy is coming at us at point zero five light?”

“That’s right, Master Chief,” Geary said. “The dark ships are holding their velocity down to ensure they get good fire-control solutions on us when we encounter them.”

“Which means we’ll meet them at a combined relative velocity of point two light,” Gioninni concluded. “That’s important, because the same relativity junk that messes with our fire-control systems can also throw off our maneuvering systems. But point two light is copacetic. Our systems can see precisely enough at that velocity to cut everything as fine as they have to. Yes, Captain, the maneuvering systems can do it. In theory.”

“In theory?” Desjani pressed.

“Well, Captain, you know how it is,” Gioninni explained. “There’s theory, and then there’s the real universe. The maneuvering systems can calculate those approaches and that final acceleration by the battleship formations so that it will play out exactly like you want. But the maneuvering systems can’t tell if the dark ships might do something a little different, or if the guide ship on one of the battleship formations might have a slight hiccup in its main propulsion when the acceleration burst order comes down, or something like that. Yes, our systems can do it, but there isn’t any one hundred percent guarantee that something as precise as that will not be impacted by some sort of friction in the process.”

“It wouldn’t take much friction,” Chief Busek offered. “But it should work.”

“Would you bet your butt on it?” Desjani asked.

Chief Busek hesitated a moment, then nodded.

Master Chief Gioninni scratched his head, thinking. “I’m not naturally the gambling type, Captain—”

“You’re not the gambling type?” Desjani asked with obvious skepticism.

“No, ma’am,” Gioninni protested. “Gambling is a game of chance. There’s risk and uncertainty as to whether or not you’ll win. I never gamble, Captain.”

“You only bet on sure things?” Geary asked.

“If you call that betting, yes, Admiral. I can’t help it if any other parties to the transaction think there’s any chance that they might win.”

Desjani shook her head, looking briefly upward as if beseeching aid. “Do you regard the proposed maneuvers as a sure thing, Master Chief?”

Gioninni hesitated only a moment longer, then nodded vigorously. “Close enough, Captain. I’d give it a shot. But, I have to say, if there is any interference with the automated systems, if there is anyone deciding they need to nudge this or that a little because they think the approach isn’t quite right, then all bets are off. There are things humans do really well, and things we do a lot better than automated systems, but something like this calls for split-second timing that is a bit beyond our capabilities.”

“Thank you. We’ll keep that in mind, Master Chief.” Desjani dismissed the two chiefs, then looked at Geary. “Let’s do it, Admiral.”

Inputting the instructions to the maneuvering systems was almost too simple. The three Alliance formations were here, here, and here, traveling along these vectors. Alter their vectors so that all three pass through the same intercept point with the oncoming dark ships at almost exactly the same time. Specify that the formation built around Dauntless be fractionally in the lead until the last possible moment, when a burst of acceleration from the battleships would push them ahead of Dauntless by just less than a second.

The maneuvering systems contemplated the problem for all of two seconds before providing the necessary maneuvers.

Geary studied the results, glancing at Desjani for her opinion.

She shrugged. “Master Chief Gioninni is right. This has to be a hands-off set of maneuvers. The solution looks fine to me, but there is a really tiny margin of error.”

“We can’t help that. We have to hit the dark ships hard before the battle cruisers get close enough to engage us. This may be our only chance to inflict a nasty blow on the dark battleships.”

Geary ordered the maneuvering commands sent to every ship in his fleet. “All units in First Fleet, this is Admiral Geary. You are receiving sets of automated maneuvering orders which must be implemented precisely. No variations and no interference are permitted. These are to be hands-off maneuvers. Captain Armus, Captain Jane Geary,” he said, naming the commanders of Colossus and Dreadnaught, who were also in charge of the two battleship formations, “I am counting on your formations inflicting devastating damage on the dark ships along our path through the enemy formation. While the enemy is targeting Dauntless and the ships with her, you need to blow a hole through the enemy formation that the battle cruisers will exploit.”

“Understood,” Captain Jane Geary replied.

“The battleships will be leading the way?” Captain Armus asked, deliberately needling the battle cruiser commanders who were used to being at the forefront of action.

“That is correct,” Geary said, while Desjani quietly fumed beside him.

“We will be happy to ease the path of our comrades on the battle cruisers,” Armus concluded. The dour battleship captain did not smile often, but he seemed to be having trouble not doing so now. “Understood, Admiral.”

The automated maneuvers cut in, every ship in the Alliance force shifting vector, some accelerating as well as altering their track through space. The three diamonds of Geary’s subformations compressed into narrower wedges, all three now on paths that were rapidly bringing them together.

Geary itched to issue commands, to insert himself directly into the maneuvers. But there were times to do that and times to trust in the equipment that men and women had painstakingly created. “We rarely notice them, do we?” he said to Desjani.

She gave him a questioning look, then nodded. “You mean the automated systems? All of the stuff we depend on to keep this ship working?”

“Yeah. We only notice it when it breaks or malfunctions in some ways. The rest of the time, it’s just there.”

“That’s how it’s supposed to be,” Desjani replied. “Transparent technology. It works without anyone having to worry about it or having to master arcane commands and rules. Sure, it needs a lot of tender, loving care and the occasional hard kick in the rear to keep it working right, but that’s why we have our enlisted specialists aboard, to provide the help the automated systems need so they can help humans kill each other.”

“You are such a romantic soul,” Geary said, watching the time to contact with the enemy scrolling down rapidly. “I wonder how the dark ships handle maintenance and repair?”

“They must have automated systems to look after the automated systems. And other automated systems to look after the automated systems that look after the automated systems. And maybe another layer beyond to look after those automated systems. Can you imagine the complexity and the cost of all that?”

“Not easily.” He kept his eyes on his display, where the movements of every Alliance ship exactly matched their planned vectors, two hundred warships moving in a complex dance that would soon end in a brutal climax.

Hands off. Having set it up, all he could do now was watch.

“Five minutes to contact,” Lieutenant Castries said, echoing the information on Geary’s display.

“Very well.” Desjani sat back in her command seat as if relaxed, but the expression she turned toward Geary betrayed some worry. “Isn’t this a little last-ditch and desperate for this stage of the battle, Admiral?” she murmured, too low for anyone else to hear.

“We need to hit them really hard this time,” he repeated.

“That should happen, but if the timing of our battleships is off by even a second, you and I and everyone else aboard Dauntless will never know it. We’ll take so many hits that the only thing left will be a cloud of dust heading really fast along our last vector.”

“I know.” He had seen just that happen too many times already to too many warships, and he knew that Tanya had seen a lot more ships die in combat than he had. “If that happens, at least what used to be you and me will be part of the same dust cloud.”

“Wow. Is that what you consider romantic, Admiral?”

“It’s the best I’ve got at the moment, Captain.”

She kept her eyes on her display, smiling. “See you on the other side.” Then, much louder, Desjani called out to the watch-standers. “I want every shot to hit. Take out as many of these soulless bastards as we can.”

“Ready, Captain,” the watch-standers chorused.

Geary could hear the tension in their voices but also the determination. He understood the mixed emotions because he felt them himself. Any firing pass was a gamble. No matter how good the maneuvering systems were at avoiding collisions, the fact remained that even the smallest error could result in two warships running into each other at velocities that instantly reduced both to tiny fragments. Or the enemy might choose to target your ship in particular, or a lucky hit might penetrate to a critical area, or…

Some things were not worth worrying about, not when you couldn’t do a thing about them.

But this was a particularly risky firing pass, and everyone knew it.

“One minute to intercept,” Lieutenant Castries called out, her voice almost cracking on the first word but steadying and coming out clear and firm at the end.

The six formations were rapidly converging, Geary’s three formations headed for that single point where the center of the dark ship main formation would be, and the dark ships coming on steadily, with the smaller formations on either side sliding closer to the main body.

“Ten seconds.” This time Castries’ voice stayed steady. “We have confirmation that our battleship formations are accelerating.”

Geary didn’t know whether he really saw any of the Alliance battleships, cruisers, and destroyers rushing in toward the same point where Dauntless and the other battle cruisers and their escorts were going. He didn’t know whether he really saw the dark ship formation suddenly loom directly ahead, going from tiny dots of light to massive warships in the blink of a human eye. Maybe he imagined those images, or maybe his brain manufactured them.

He felt Dauntless’s weapons firing, felt the battle cruiser shudder from hits, waited for a moment of incredible force to smash himself and this ship.

It took a few seconds for him to realize that they were past the encounter. Geary heard a couple of gasps of relief as some of the watch-standers absorbed the same knowledge.

“Made it,” Desjani said, as if no other outcome had been plausible. “Status, people!”

The watch-standers sprang to action to consolidate information for her, while Geary bent closer to his display, wondering whether the risk had paid off.

The three Alliance formations had essentially merged in the final seconds prior to contact with the dark ships, a mass of warships whose movements had fortunately been coordinated by the fleet’s maneuvering systems. But that mass was slamming head-on into another mass, that of the dark ships. Only the fact that the dark ships held their vectors, sticking to their predicted courses, prevented any collisions.

As the Alliance battleships had surged very slightly ahead of the battle cruisers, their weapons had fired, eighteen huge warships bristling with weaponry unloading everything they had at the dark ships preparing to fire on Dauntless and the other battle cruisers. Missiles leaped out, impacting on targets almost as soon as they launched. Hell-lance particle beams formed a brilliant forest of lethal energy that bored into their targets. Grapeshot struck within milliseconds of the other weapons, pounding warships whose shields and armor had already been battered by earlier hits. And where the battleships had passed close enough to targets, the glowing balls of null fields had eaten holes in opponents, dissolving the bonds that held molecules and atoms together.

Geary had to drastically slow the playback generated by the fleet’s sensors to see that much. Immediately behind the Alliance battleships had come the battle cruiser formation, but instead of running into a wall of fire as well, the battle cruisers had faced only those surviving after the rampage of the battleships. Dauntless and her companions had fired, tearing apart smaller warships and adding to the damage inflicted on dark battleships already badly hurt. “We took some hits,” Geary said as his display lit with damage reports from other ships. “But we hit them a lot worse.”

Three dark battleships were gone, blown to pieces despite their mammoth defenses. A fourth was crippled, so badly shot up that it had lost all weapons and all maneuvering control, tumbling helplessly onward in the wake of its companions.

Between them, the Alliance formations had knocked out a dozen dark heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers, and twenty-three destroyers.

The vast majority of the enemy ships in that part of their formation within range of the Alliance charge had their fire-control systems locked on Dauntless and the other battle cruisers. In the almost-a-second between the time when the Alliance battleships came within range and when Dauntless could have been engaged, most of the dark ship weapons had never had a chance to fire, being destroyed while awaiting a shot at their chosen targets.

Few of the warships in Geary’s battleship formations had been targeted by the enemy, so few had received any hits. Many more ships in the battle cruiser formation had been hit, but even though half a dozen Alliance battle cruisers had suffered significant damage, only one heavy cruiser, Bunker, and a half dozen destroyers had been hit badly enough to be out of the fight.

Bunker was staggering away from the other Alliance ships, trying to regain some maneuvering control. The destroyers Thunderbolt, Monitor, and Kopis had been completely obliterated. Patu, Lathi, and Naginata were still at least partly intact but so badly damaged that their surviving crew members were abandoning ship in any escape pods that remained in working condition.

Both Incredible and Dragon had taken hits to their main propulsion, though, enough to limit their maneuverability, and the battleship Fearless had also lost a propulsion unit.

“Several hits on Dauntless,” Lieutenant Yuon was summarizing. “Hell-lance battery 2A out of commission. Maneuvering thruster 3B off-line. No estimated times to repair yet. Hull penetrations are being sealed by damage control teams. Two dead confirmed. Seventeen wounded.”

The losses hurt. Even one man or woman killed hurt. The destroyers that had not survived had lost their entire crews. Despite that, it had been a wildly successful tactic. But… “Given the firepower advantages of the dark ships,” Geary said, “we’ve only roughly evened the odds with their battleship formations.” He did not have to add that the dark battle cruiser formation charging their way would give the dark ships a major advantage.

Desjani nodded, grimacing. “And we can’t do that again. The dark ships will already be analyzing what happened and preparing to counter it if they see us setting up another attack like that.”

The dark battleships were already closing ranks in their formation, unfazed by their losses, filling in the gap that Geary’s ships had blown through them.

He only had to repeat what he had just done, in terms of losses to the dark ships and losses suffered by his own side, at least twice more to even the odds, and perhaps half a dozen times to win.

A moment of despair filled Admiral John Geary.

Then he began issuing orders again. Because the people he commanded needed Black Jack if they were to survive.

“Immediate execute, all units, come up zero nine five degrees.” His fleet, the three formations still intermingled, began curving upward and back toward another intercept with the dark battleships. Incredible, Dragon, Fearless, and a score of cruisers and destroyers struggled to match the maneuver due to the damage to their propulsion systems.

His ships were shedding some velocity in the massive turn, but he didn’t worry about maintaining speed. Point one five light was a bit fast for his taste when it came to maneuvering in battle, and limiting acceleration made it easier for the damaged ships to stay with their formations.

“Captain?” Lieutenant Castries said. “The dark battle cruiser formation was up to point three five light speed an hour ago.”

“What?” Desjani glared at her display. “At the rate they have been moving, they’ll get within combat range in another three hours,” she warned Geary.

“Even though the dark ships can handle more stress on acceleration and deceleration than our ships can, they’ll have to start braking that velocity really soon, or they’ll tear right past us,” he replied. “I wouldn’t have ramped up the velocity on those battle cruisers and their escorts that high. Is the dark ship AI based on my actions breaking down, or is this supposed to be the Black Jack who people imagined before I came back?”

“Maybe the Black Jack legend,” Desjani said. “You in reality try to think a few moves ahead. I don’t know. We might have to assume the AIs are getting erratic, maybe testing their limits.”

“Dr. Nasr said they could run into problems if they encountered new situations,” Geary said. “New limitations, or possibilities they create by working around old limitations. But unless those problems cause their weapons to go off-line, they probably won’t help us much.”

He was studying his display again, seeing the dark battleship formation, a little smaller now, the two subformations on either side remaining close, as it came up and around to head back toward an intercept with the Alliance warships. The dark battleships had been moving a lot slower, and so could turn in much less distance, though that was a relative term given how huge the turns were when ships were moving at appreciable fractions of the speed of light. The dark ships were steadying out earlier than Geary’s ships were, heading along a flat curve to meet up with the Alliance warships as they cleared the top of their own turn.

The enemy was clearly aiming to hit the Alliance formations head-on again, and this time he couldn’t count on any dark ships holding their fire while waiting for the right target to get within range. “They’re still going at a lot less velocity, so they can keep turning inside our own maneuvers,” he grumbled.

It left only one good option, to change velocity just prior to the dark ships’ intercepting his formations, aiming to throw off the enemy plans and enabling Geary to hopefully hit a portion of the dark ships while the rest of them were unable to engage the Alliance ships.

With plenty of time left before both sides clawed through their vast turns, Geary rearranged his formations, keeping three of them, but changing the diamonds to discs aligned along the path the ships were taking.

Trying to judge the right moment for the next maneuvers, he watched the movements of ships through space, the great arcs marking the projected paths of his formations and the dark battleship formations, as well as the flat curve of the route of the dark battle cruisers racing to reach the scene of the fighting. “All units in First Fleet, reduce propulsion to forty percent maximum at time three six.”

The propulsion of the Alliance warships had been pushing them around the arc, altering the direction of movement, the more force, the tighter the turn, limited by how much stress the ships and crews could stand and how much push the main propulsion units could provide. Even with the ships’ inertial dampers straining at full capability, both ships and crews had been feeling some of the pressure of the forces tearing at them.

As the dark ships raced toward another intercept, the force on Geary’s ships abruptly lessened as the main propulsion units on the warships throttled back in accordance with his orders. Just as abruptly, the arc of the turn the ships were going through shifted, growing wider, the Alliance warships swinging outward farther than they had been moments earlier.

The dark ships, aiming for where the Alliance ships should have been, were now on paths that would take them just under the Alliance formations, whose flattened discs would give nearly every Alliance warship a decent shot at the enemy. Ideally, if Geary had called it right, the top edge of the dark ship formations would be within range of the Alliance warships’ weapons. The Alliance warships themselves were traveling along the arc, but their bows, with the majority of their weaponry and their strongest shields and armor, were pointed toward where the enemy ships would pass.

If this pass worked, it would be perfect.

The moment came, and went.

“No engagement,” Lieutenant Yuon reported, sounding as if he were responsible for the failure.

“The dark ships thought you were going to accelerate again and tighten our turn,” Desjani said as she studied the playback from the last encounter. “They tried to compensate for that, we both went in different directions, and nobody was within range of anybody.”

“I considered tightening the turn,” Geary said. “It could have gone either way. Let’s try again.” He activated the fleetwide command net. “All units in First Fleet, immediate execute, pivot one four zero degrees up, accelerate to point one light speed.”

The Alliance warships swung in place, then lit off their main propulsion again at a higher intensity. Their paths began to recurve, twisting up along the opposite direction of the previous turn, but higher, aiming toward where the dark ships were also slewing about and maneuvering for another intercept.

“Have engineering check something for me,” Desjani called to her watch-standers. “I want to know what they can tell me about the main propulsion signatures on the dark ships.”

The answer came within a minute. “Engineering has been running that analysis, Captain. They say the signatures on the dark ships are identical to those on our main propulsion units.”

“But the dark ships have consistently been maneuvering harder than we do,” Desjani said. “It’s not because their main propulsion units have more capability than ours? They’re just using more thrust?”

“Yes, Captain. They’re burning their main drives hotter and longer to get more thrust out of them.”

“Thank you.” Desjani glanced at Geary. “Can we use that?”

“I don’t know.” Geary gestured toward the virtual tiles hanging in the air near his command seat that listed the status of all of his ships, updating every time any change took place. “They’re forcing us to maneuver hard as well. As hard as we can, anyway. I can’t let them run rings around us.”

“So they’re burning fuel cells faster, but they’re also forcing us to do the same.”

“Yeah. And we don’t know how big their fuel cell reserves are. Did the builders use the same levels as on our ships, or did they add extra stockpiles?”

Desjani made a face. “One of those agents we’re holding might know. How about if we stick them on the bow of Dauntless before our next engagement with the dark ships? Just to encourage them to talk.”

“We can’t do that, Tanya.”

“I wasn’t going to put them out there in their shirtsleeves. I’d put them in survival suits,” she said. “I wonder if duct tape would hold them on to the outer hull? We could find out.”

“Still can’t do it,” Geary said. “But I wish we could.”

This time, the two formations were racing toward an intercept in which both would be at an angle to the other, meeting partway through their turns. Once again, Geary faced the question of whether to try to tighten the turn or to slack off on acceleration and widen it. Another look at the damage status of some of his ships, Fearless and Incredible in particular, led him to decide to once again ease off acceleration just before contact.

“I should be used to the waits between firing runs by now,” Geary murmured as he watched the apparently slow movement of both forces through the immense distances of space.

“I’m not,” Desjani commented, “and I’ve been doing it longer than you have, old man.”

“Excuse me?”

“Old man, sir.”

“That’s better.” A touch of the comm controls. “All units in First Fleet, go to forty-four percent propulsion at time one four.”

In the last moments before contact, the Alliance warships swung a little wider, once again aiming for the upper portion of the dark ship formation.

“No engagement,” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “No ships were within range of the enemy during the pass.”

“Damn,” Geary got out in a whisper. “Let’s try this different.” He swung the battle cruisers up again, curving back once more, but both of his battleship formations went out to the sides and then up, the three formations bracketing the future path of the dark ships also coming back in another upward curve.

This time he did a last-second shift to starboard with the battle cruisers, while the two battleship formations swung lower and toward each other, in an attempt to bracket the dark ship subformation to one side of the main formation.

“No engagement.” Lieutenant Yuon had stopped sounding guilty. Now he appeared to be confused.

Geary, feeling angry and frustrated, assessed the status of his ships, then called out new orders. One Alliance battleship formation swung wide to starboard, one swung wide to port, and the battle cruisers twisted about and aimed straight for an intercept with the dark ships coming back for another run.

He dove the battle cruiser formation before contact, aiming under the dark ships, while the battleship formations on either side held their vectors so that no matter which way the dark ships went, the Alliance warships should get some shots at them.

“No engagement.”

Geary could feel everyone on the bridge carefully not looking at him. He could sense how crews on every other ship in the fleet were reacting. Something was very wrong, and he wasn’t sure what it was.

Had he lost his nerve? Was he so afraid of losing this battle that he wouldn’t take the necessary losses to win it?

But he was doing nothing differently. He was trying to hit the enemy. And how could the dark ships keep missing his ships if Geary was displaying any sort of unconscious pattern of avoiding closing to weapons range? He might not be aware of it, but the dark ships would see such a pattern. They would exploit it and catch him next time.

“Admiral?” Tanya was eyeing him with an unusual level of concern apparent.

“Something is wrong,” Geary said. “None of the passes are working.”

“We have to close to engagement range.”

“I know that!”

“Admiral,” Desjani said in her most formal tone of voice, “we have to hit them despite the risks—”

“I have demonstrated my willingness to take risks, Captain,” Geary snapped.

“Getting too close is dangerous, but if we don’t—”

“Captain Desjani, I am making just as strong an effort to engage those dark ships as I ever have in any battle!” He glowered at his display as Desjani fell silent and stared fixedly at her own display. What wasn’t working? he wondered. To guess incorrectly that many times in a row? To completely miss engaging the dark ships time and again? How could that be happening?

Not by chance.

“Damn.” His tone of voice brought Desjani’s eyes back on him. “It’s not us. We’re not engaging on these firing passes because the dark ships are deliberately avoiding getting within range of us.”

“They’re avoiding action?” She took another look at her display, swallowed, then inclined her head toward him. “My apologies, Admiral. I did not consider that possibility, but I’m certain that you’re right.”

“None of us considered it, Captain,” Geary said. “Because of the ruthless tactics of the dark ships prior to this. But they are tactics, and tactics can change depending on the situation. Right now, the dark ships have a reason to avoid action just as we have had reasons to seek action.”

“But why would they—?” Her eyes widened. “They’re just keeping us engaged and occupied in dealing with them, forcing us into repeated maneuvers to counter them. Stalling for time and keeping us in this region of space.”

“Until their battle cruisers get here,” Geary said, his voice as grim as his mood. “And then they will hit us with everything at once.”