Dreadnaught

But Dauntless was committed by momentum to her current track, unable to reverse course fast enough to engage alien attackers that had made it past her. Geary could only watch with a sick feeling as more alien craft swung onto final runs aimed at Titan and Tanuki, but then, astoundingly, Orion was there, the battleship climbing from below, knocking out one alien ship short of Titan, then blowing apart the second at point-blank range astern of Tanuki. The resulting explosion knocked even the mass of the battleship a bit to one side.

Another alien was homing in on the transport Mistral, but the heavy cruisers Diamond, Gauntlet, and Buckler had managed to claw close enough to fire a volley of hell lances into the rear of the missile craft and shatter it short of its target.

No other alien craft had survived long enough to get close to the transports and auxiliaries. Bringing his eyes back to the wider battle, Geary tried to sort out alien ship markers from the mass of debris and the confused swirl of Alliance warships not only seeking targets but also trying to dodge each other and the bigger pieces of debris.

Nothing. The only red showing on the display were the scores of collision warnings still proliferating, then vanishing just as quickly as fleet maneuvering systems shook hands among ships and made the millisecond-fast decisions and coordinated vector changes needed to avoid crashes. The last of the alien craft had been destroyed, and now he had to figure out how much damage they had done. All he could tell at the moment was that the damage hadn’t been the massacre it might have been. “All units, resume Formation Delta when safe to maneuver to station. Formation speed is point zero five light speed.” Get everyone slowed down, while continuing to open the distance to that orbiting fortress, and into a simple box, as simple as any formation could be, while he tried to sort out things.

“Wow,” Desjani commented, smiling, her face a little flushed. “It worked. Cool plan, Admiral.”

“You’re crazy,” he replied, his heart still pounding.

“I thought you liked that in a woman. Did you see what Orion did?”

“Yeah,” Geary agreed, slightly giddy with relief even while dreading what damage might have been done to the fleet. “You were right about Captain Shen.”

“I’m always right, Admiral. Lieutenant Yuon, who was that battleship that got way too far inside our personal space?”

“The systems identify her as Dreadnaught, Captain. Closest point of approach was—” Yuon’s voice choked to a halt, then came out at a higher pitch. “That can’t be right.”

Desjani checked the distance herself, then fell silent for a few seconds. “Admiral, you need to have another talk with Dreadnaught’s commanding officer. Captain Jane Geary owes me a drink,” she added. “And I owe my ancestors some thanks.”

“We all do.” Both Jane Geary and his ancestors would have to wait for the moment, though. Geary pulled out the scale on his display again, finally having the luxury of viewing the entire star system in search of more distant threats. The huge orbiting fortress at the jump point wasn’t launching any more ships or missiles or whatever those alien craft had been, but it wasn’t the only such monster fortification here. “I have a nasty suspicion that it’s not going to be hard to figure out where the other jump points are in this star system.”

Desjani raised an eyebrow, then checked her own display. “Ancestors preserve us. They’ve got the same kinds of fortresses in two other orbits, both far enough from the star to be guarding jump points as well.”

Fortresses that doubtless also carried hundreds of long-range missiles. Elsewhere in the star system, still light hours distant, numerous warships were still being identified by the fleet sensors. Geary let out a low whistle as he viewed some of that data. “Several of the alien warships are assessed by our sensors as massing three times larger than a Guardian-class battleship.”

“They build big, don’t they?” Desjani asked. “Fortunately, the nearest of those things are three light hours distant, and with that much mass, they can’t be very nimble. Even I’d rather not tangle with them, though.”

“We still have received no communications to us from the inhabitants of this star system,” Rione reported tonelessly. “They have not yet responded to any of our messages.”