The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

“They’re not totally different from us,” Rione said. “There are ways in which we could find common ground if they would talk to us. But our earlier estimate that these herbivores attacked us solely because we appeared to be predators was incomplete.”

“There’s another reason?” Geary asked.

She waved in the direction where the distant bear-cow planet lay. “We would be competition, Admiral. They don’t allow competition of any kind. They’ve wiped out the competition on their home world, and if they had not been pinned here by the presence of the enigmas, they might have expanded to human-controlled space by now, plowing under every other life-form they encountered.”

“What about in the other directions? Do we have to assume that the bear-cows are surrounded by enigma-controlled space?”

“We can hope,” Rione said. “And, yes, I know none of us would have hoped for that before coming to this star, but now the enigmas do seem to be the lesser of two evils.”

“Pandora,” Desjani said.

“What?” Geary spoke for everyone else on the bridge.

“One of those old legends,” Desjani explained. “The type that blamed everything that was wrong on women. Pandora opened some box and found all kinds of bad things in it. I think Pandora might be a good name for this particular star.”

“Those old legends didn’t blame all women for everything that was wrong,” Charban said. “They only blamed women who . . . didn’t do as they were told.”

“A critical distinction,” Rione said in dry tones. “It is, after all, hard to overemphasize the importance of obedience in women.”

Desjani grinned at Charban’s discomfort, then suddenly realized that she had allied with Rione in this matter and shifted her attention back to Geary. “Five minutes until we see their reaction.”

Not wanting to get involved in the discussion of historical views on “appropriate” female behavior that Charban had unwittingly opened, Geary simply nodded, focusing back on his display. The bear-cows should react to his last maneuver by coming to port, heading down very slightly, and accelerating again to set up another intercept with the human fleet.

“There’s always the chance,” Desjani said, “that the armada will peel off to let the fortress deal with us.”

“I know. Our next maneuver will get us much closer to them, though. If what we know and guess about the bear-cows is right, they’ll keep after us.”

The bear-cow armada shifted vector exactly on schedule, making the exact changes in course necessary to bring about another intercept while the bear-cow warships began increasing their velocity. Geary gave them time to steady out on their next course, but ordered the next human maneuver while the bear-cows were still accelerating. “All units come starboard one three four degrees up five degrees at time two seven.”

This time the human formation swung widely back toward the bear-cow armada, every ship pivoting in place within the box. “They’re eighteen light-minutes distant,” Desjani commented, “but we’re going to close that fast on this new course. Current closing speed is point two four light speed, and they’ll keep accelerating until they see we’ve turned toward them.”

Geary nodded, his attention back on the alien fortress. The human fleet had gradually closed the distance to that as well, so the fortress was now but twenty-two light-minutes away, its relative bearing on the port quarter of the Alliance warships as they steadied onto their new course. The bear-cow armada was off the starboard bows of the human ships, so that alien fortress, human fleet, and alien armada were now nearly in a line, with the humans between the two bear-cow forces. “We’re going to be making quicker moves from here on, and a lot of it is going to be by instinct since we won’t have time to see the bear-cow reactions before we make our next move. Let me know if anything feels wrong to you.”

“You’re better than me at fleet maneuvers,” Desjani said. “A lot better.”

“But you can judge whether or not Dauntless is moving the way we want. Just let me know how that feels. Every other ship in this fleet is keeping position on Dauntless, so if she’s moving how we want, they’ll be moving how we want.”

“Yes, sir.”

Seventy-five minutes left to contact, or more like seventy if the bear-cows kept accelerating.