The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

Status reports everywhere showed problems. Not anywhere near the scale that had happened at Honor, but as the ships of the pursuit force had pushed their maneuvering and propulsion systems to the maximum, there had been spot failures in a score of ships. Implacable and Intemperate had each lost a main propulsion unit, which they were frantically working to bring back on line, while Valiant had suffered failures in half of her maneuvering thruster systems. All three battle cruisers had lagged behind their places in formation. They were accompanied by several light cruisers as well as ten destroyers that had also lost partial propulsion or maneuvering. Geary started to think that at least no ship had lost all propulsion, then hastily cut off the thought lest it somehow jinx the fleet.

Dragon and Victorious were keeping place in formation but dealing with fluctuating shield failures, while individual hell-lance batteries were failing here and there on dozens of ships.

The main-body formation under Captain Armus was suffering from scattered problems as well, but they had the auxiliaries with them as well as more time to fix the sudden system failures.

As Captain Smythe had predicted, not only Witch but also Jinn and Goblin were out of critical materials and now unable to manufacture new items. Cyclops had an inventory so low that it would probably report the same condition within a few hours. Their engineers were assisting the crews of other ships in repair work, but that was all they could do for now.

“It could be worse,” Geary said. “We’ve got a few more hours for this formation to fix things before we enter jump, and then the transit time to Midway to do internal repairs.”

“And the Kicks aren’t still chasing us,” Desjani added.

He couldn’t help a brief smile, which faded as he reviewed the repair status of fleet ships again. Yes, they had time to work, but having the parts they needed was another matter. “I hope we’re not running low on duct tape, too. I think we’re going to need a lot of it.”

He had wondered if something else would show up at Pele while the fleet was passing through, perhaps more enigma ships racing to join up with their main force. But once the enigmas had jumped, there was nothing at Pele but the two human subformations and the spider-wolf formation between them. The main-body formation had fallen well behind the pursuit formation by the time the battle cruisers and their escorts pivoted to begin braking down to point one light speed for the jump.

Geary felt the stress as Dauntless’s main propulsion units roared at maximum force to slow the ship. Tanya had cut the maneuver to the barest safety margins to shave a few more minutes off the time to jump. One of these days he would learn to double-check how many demands she was putting on propulsion units, ships’ structures, and the inertial nullifiers.

But then she almost never exceeded danger margins. She got the ships real close to those margins but never right up to them. Usually.

“Almost there,” Desjani noted over the complaints of the inertial nullifiers as they tried to keep ships from disintegrating and their crews from being pulped into jelly by the forces being used. “Spider-wolves are still hanging exactly ten light-minutes behind us.”

“They want us jumping first into whatever the enigmas will have waiting at Midway,” Geary replied. “Not that I can blame them.”

He tapped his comm controls. “Captain Armus, we’ll see you at Midway. I have no doubt that we’ll need your firepower there. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.” He ended his message in the ceremonial manner because that felt right this time.

There wouldn’t be enough time for the message to reach Armus and for Armus to send a reply in the fifteen minutes remaining until jump, so Geary tried to relax despite the force of deceleration. “All units in pursuit force, this is Admiral Geary. Be at full combat readiness when we arrive at Midway. The enigma force that we saw jump for Midway may be awaiting our arrival or may be striking at targets in that star system. Either way, we’re going to teach them once again that attacking human-controlled space is a very bad idea. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”

“Being awfully formal for fleet communications, aren’t you, Admiral?” Desjani said.

“The next time I talk to them, we may be in the middle of a fight.”

As the pursuit-force formation had braked, any ships still lagging had taken advantage of that to catch up, Implacable, Intemperate, and Valiant as well as assorted light cruisers and destroyers sliding into their positions relative to Dauntless. Velocity kept slowing as the distance to the jump point shrank.

Every ship reached point one light speed as the jump point loomed right ahead. “All units jump.”

Geary forced himself to relax as the outside went gray and formless. “How is Dauntless doing?” he asked Desjani.