The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

“I’m not certain,” Charban said after passing on Geary’s reply using the coordination circuit. The words had barely left his mouth when the universe twitched and the stars disappeared, leaving only darkness around Dauntless. “Correction. The answer is no, they will not provide a countdown.”

“Thank you, General.” Geary looked at the different kind of nothing that surrounded ships during hypernet transits. A bubble of nothing, Desjani had called it, in which the ships were suspended. According to physicists, they didn’t actually go anywhere, but at the other hypernet gate they would drop out into normal space a very long ways from where they had entered the gate here.

“Four days, the spider-wolves said,” Charban reminded Geary.

“We’re going a long way,” Desjani commented. “Did I tell you that the longer the trip in hypernet space, the less time it takes?”

“Yes, you did.” He remembered that moment vividly, waiting to go into the fleet conference room on Dauntless for the first time to assume command of a trapped fleet. It had been the first time he’d really met Tanya, and she had frightened him with her expressions of faith in his ability to save them all.

She had been right, but he still thought that luck had played far too large a part in that.

MAYBE it was being in hyperspace, which—being nowhere—shouldn’t cause any discomfort but still did as far as Geary was concerned. Maybe it was the many unknowns he had to face. Maybe something had reminded him of past trials.

In the middle of the ship’s night he woke up, sweating heavily, his eyes on the overhead reassuring him that it was intact. The clamor of alarms, the crash of explosions, and the screams of the dying still echoed in his head, but his stateroom was quiet with the hush that came during nights, even when those nights were artificial on ships far from any planet.

Geary sat up in the dark, rubbing his face with both hands, feet on the deck to reassure him with the solidity of the ship and the countless small vibrations transmitted through Dauntless, which told him that the ship lived.

“Admiral?” Desjani’s face was on his comm screen, her hair disheveled from sleep, her eyes still focusing as she came fully awake. In hypernet space, like jump space, even a battle cruiser commander could try to get a decent night’s sleep.

He took a deep breath before answering. “What is it?”

“‘What is it?’” You called me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She frowned. “I can call up comm system records if you want. Maybe you hit the hot button to call me in your sleep, but you hit it.”

Feeling guilty, Geary looked at the controls ranked beneath the screen at his bunk. He could have accidentally hit the one that went direct to Tanya, especially since it was the closest one to where he might have flailed an arm while fighting battles in his sleep. “I’m sorry. It was just an accident.”

Instead of ringing off, she studied him. “You look like hell.”

“Thank you.”

“Nightmare?”

“Yes.”

She just waited, watching him with the patience of a cat standing sentry at a mousehole, ready to be there all the rest of the night if necessary.

“There was a battle,” Geary said. “That’s all. The usual.”

“The usual?” Tanya sighed. “You’re not the only one to get flashbacks. And I know about the nightmares about Merlon, remember? One of them woke me on our honeymoon. Was this just reliving Merlon’s last moments?”

He could have said yes, but she probably would have known he wasn’t being honest. “Partly. It was mixed in with other stuff.” She was still waiting. “I have these dreams sometimes. I’m on the bridge of Dauntless, or Merlon, and I’m in command of a fleet, and I’m not paying attention for a moment, just for a tiny moment, and all of a sudden enemies are there, right on top of us. Overwhelming numbers of them. I send orders, but they’re late, and they’re wrong, and ships get destroyed. Ships are being destroyed on all sides, and the ship I’m on is getting hit hard, and I know it’s the end because I know how that feels when a ship has lost, and it’s all my fault.”

“All right,” Tanya said. “Been there, though not the fleet commander part. Have you been getting stress therapy?”

“Yeah.” He felt a little better just from talking to her, though that had also brought back vividly the images of destruction from his nightmare. “They make it easier. They don’t make it go away.”

She laughed, low and soft and bitter. “You think I don’t know that? I’ve been fighting longer than you have, sailor.”

“I was hoping the treatments had gotten better in the century of the war.”