The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

“Not on this ship,” the Major said. “They’re out there. In the passageways.”

“Who’s out there?” Geary asked, feeling a slight chill.

“The Kicks,” Lagemann said. “I don’t think I’m particularly sensitive or superstitious, but I can feel them. Thousands of them died on this ship, and if you go out there in the rest of the ship, you can sense them crowding around you. They know we took their ship, and they don’t like it.”

Major Dietz nodded. “I’ve been in abandoned enemy installations before, the kinds of places where you keep feeling like whoever left will come back at any moment and be really unhappy to find you there. That’s a little spooky. This ship is a lot worse. We send out squad-strength patrols because that’s the smallest group that can keep from going buggy while they’re out there. We tried fire teams for a while. A couple of Marines. They ended up firing randomly, running back to the occupied area with stories of hundreds of Kicks still aboard and alive, that sort of thing.”

“Was it worse in jump space?” Geary asked.

“Now that you mention it, yes, sir. But even here, in normal space near a star, it’s spooky. Nobody goes off on their own. Not more than once.”

“That’s strange. We’ll get this ship back home and let the scientists and techs dispute control of it with whatever remains of the Kicks.”

“We’ve speculated,” Admiral Lagemann said, “that it might be some sort of side effect of some Kick equipment that’s still running somehow. Like the way a high-pitched whistle can make a dog unhappy, only it’s something that works on human nerves in an unpleasant way. Like virtual fingernails scraping on an imaginary chalkboard. Or it could be ghosts. Damned if I know.”

“Be sure you put your speculation about Kick equipment into your report when you leave the ship,” Geary directed. “Could it be some sort of last-ditch defense? Some means the Kicks could activate that would make occupancy of this ship untenable for their enemies?”

Dietz and Lagemann exchanged intrigued looks this time. “That’s possible, too,” Lagemann said. “But since it makes sense to us, it might not be the real reason.”

“I understand,” Geary said, thinking of what he had seen of Kick technology. Much of their equipment used methods totally foreign to the conventions of human thought and equipment. “Where should I see next?”

Lagemann pointed toward the temporary air lock. “Out there.”

“You’re kidding. I believe you about the ghosts. Or, at least, about something unnerving out there.”

“It’s not to show you that. It’s something the Marines came up with in their spare time.”

Another half dozen Marines had joined them, all in full combat armor. Geary’s lingering suspicions that his leg was being pulled by Lagemann and Dietz dwindled away as he noticed the wary manner in which the Marines eased out into the unoccupied portions of Invincible.

Warnings flashed on the face display of Geary’s survival suit as he pulled himself down the passageway with the others. Poisonous atmosphere. Toxic trace elements. Temperature barely within human-survivability range. Those factors alone would have discouraged explorers among the human prize crew.

But he could feel something else, something that didn’t register on his suit’s sensors. A feeling of something just behind him, ready to leap. Of other things moving just out of the range of his side vision. Shadows, brought to life by the lights on the human suits, that jumped around in ways those shadows should not.

And, with every meter farther away from the area occupied by humans, the sensation of being surrounded by something hostile grew.

Admiral Lagemann began speaking with forced casualness, his voice across the comm circuit between suits too obviously trying to sound relaxed. “We’ve had time to think, Major Dietz and I, and here’s what we’ve been thinking. We’re behind an awesome amount of armor, and we’re linked to four battleships, which are towing us. Beyond that, you’ve got an impressive even if damaged fleet. That’s good. But Invincible, as the first nonhuman artifact controlled by the human race, and an incredibly big artifact at that, packed with nonhuman technology, is the most valuable object in human history. Anyone who sees it, or knows about it, is going to want to get it for themselves or at the least destroy it to keep us from learning whatever we can from the ship.”

“I can’t argue with any of your points,” Geary said.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but the odds of encountering on our way home a force of warships capable of destroying the rest of the fleet and capturing Invincible are basically zero.”

“Again, that’s true. The Syndic shipyards have probably kept going to the best of their ability, so they might surprise us, but even if they do, we’re certain to have vastly superior numbers.”

“So,” Lagemann continued, “how would someone try to attack and capture Invincible?”