Dreadnaught

The remaining alien warships, only twenty-five still in the fight, had begun firing on the auxiliaries when the Alliance battleships finally trudged even with the lightly armed support ships. The cruisers and destroyers to either side and in front of the auxiliaries were now pivoting as well, the heavy cruisers unleashing some of their own specters.

It was the battleships that made the difference, though, wiping out the nearest enigma ships, then decimating the second rank.

Only six alien warships managed to break away, twisting around in maneuvers no human warship could match, to tear away at an astounding rate.

Even though the battle was over, explosions still rippled through space as the wrecked alien warships near the Alliance forces self-destructed.

“All units, resume formation, brake velocity to point zero two light speed.” He needed to see how badly his fleet had been hurt before proceeding farther into this star system.

“There’s another hypernet gate here,” Desjani snapped as she fielded damage reports. “Bastards.”

He checked the damage reports flowing into the fleet net from Dauntless and the other three battle cruisers, wincing at the results. Daring had been hit the worst, her bow badly shot up, numerous systems out, and close to a hundred crew members dead or wounded. Victorious had sixty casualties, and had lost half her hell lances. Fiftythree of Intemperate’s crew were dead or injured, and she had taken bad damage to her bow’s port quarter.

And Dauntless. “Twenty-eight dead,” Desjani said, her voice betraying no feeling, no emotion, at all. “Forty-one wounded, six critically. I have four working hell-lance batteries.” She took another report. “Correction. Three and a half working hell-lance batteries.”

Geary felt a numbness inside himself as he hit his comm controls again. Such a short period of time, better numbered in seconds than in minutes, and so many lives lost. “Captain Smythe, I want auxiliary repair support mated to Dauntless, Daring, Victorious, and Intemperate as fast as you can get them there. Daring, Victorious, and Intemperate , advise as soon as possible if you need medical assistance. General Carabali, ensure the medical teams on Mistral, Haboob, Tsunami, and Typhoon are prepared for immediate response to requests for support.”

He turned to look at Desjani, whose stony expression matched the flatness of her voice. “Does Dauntless require medical assistance?”

She made another call to sick bay, then nodded. “We can use support, Admiral, especially for the critical injuries.”

“Typhoon, close on Dauntless to provide medical support as soon as possible.” Geary noticed that Desjani was still waiting for him. “Attend to your ship, Captain. I’ll look to the rest of the fleet.”

“Thank you, Admiral.”

THANKS more than anything to the limited numbers of alien attackers, the damage to the battle cruisers was by far the worst the Alliance fleet had sustained. A few minor hits on the auxiliaries could be repaired without difficulty, and the battleships had taken only superficial damage.

They had already seen several more alien warships pop in via the hypernet gate at Alihi as the Alliance fleet hastily repaired damage and its sensors studied the planets there. The star system had two planets deemed marginally habitable by the Syndics, one just over six light minutes from its star and the other about ten light minutes distant. Neither would be comfortable for humans, but they weren’t hell-holes either. Farther out, a dense asteroid belt orbited at twenty light minutes from the star, and beyond that, four gas giants.

The enigmas had settled the planet six light minutes out, and from the sensor readings may have been undertaking the enormously difficult task of modifying its environment to be more hospitable. “Humans don’t do that,” one of the engineers explained. “It’s not that we couldn’t. We worked out the basic techniques a long time ago on that planet near Old Earth. What’s it called? Mars. But we did that before jump technology made interstellar travel pretty easy. Since then, it’s just far easier and cheaper to find a nicer planet in another star system than it is to go to the work of fixing up a marginal or hostile one.”

“Any idea why the aliens would be doing it here, then?”

The engineer pondered that. “I can think of two reasons. One would be that the planetary modifications are much simpler and less expensive for them. The other is maybe they can’t find enough better planets, like what happened when the Syndics ran into them and that region got blocked to further expansion by both sides.”

“No signs of human presence,” Lieutenant Iger reported, “but just like at Hina, our ability to analyze the inhabited world is severely constrained by their countermeasures.”