The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

She paused, decided that Geary wouldn’t budge, and turned back to her display. “I’m going to stand down my crew then. We won’t even see the reaction from those aliens ahead of us for close to another two hours, and if the bear-cows come out chasing us, they’re going to have a long haul while we decide where to let them catch us.”

He nodded this time, not wanting to face the necessity of a major fight with the bear-cows but knowing he would have to. He couldn’t simply lead a force like that back toward human-controlled space, not knowing how long the bear-cows could continue in pursuit. If they were lucky, the bear-cows would have been content with chasing the humans out of the Pandora Star System.

Though he must have made the leader of that armada extremely angry with all of the maneuvers that had set up the human escape. Not to mention how angry that leader might be at the escape itself.

It took another twenty-five minutes, with the fleet about six light-minutes from the jump exit as it continued on at a steady point one light speed, before the answer to what the bear-cows would do became clear. Alerts sounded on the displays as the fleet’s sensors spotted the bear-cow warships arriving at the jump exit six minutes ago, still in pursuit of the human fleet.

“I sure hope those guys ahead of us are friendly,” Desjani said.

SIX

THIS was one of those times when the huge distances in space could only feed frustration. With one force of unknown aliens before them, and another force of too-well-known and hostile aliens behind them, Geary wanted to do something. Anything. But he could only wait, not knowing how the unknown aliens would react to the appearance of the human fleet and aware that anything he did might be misinterpreted by the unknown aliens. Meanwhile, the bear-cow armada had begun accelerating again, slowly overhauling the human fleet. At least there the distances involved were helping Geary. Even if the bear-cows took their velocity up past point two light speed, it would take them hours to catch the humans.

“Captain, we’ve got something coming in from ahead,” the communications watch announced. “Broadcast signal repeating across a wide band of frequencies.”

Rione laughed with sudden relief. “They want to talk to us.”

“Maybe just to tell us they’re going to kill us,” Desjani muttered. “Is it just audio or also video?” she asked her comm watch.

“Definitely video, Captain. It roughly resembles one of the old formats used by humans, so we can convert the signal into something we can view as soon as the system generates the right conversion protocol. The image might get jerky at times, but it should be clear, and audio should be fine.”

“Give us a look as soon as you can,” Desjani ordered.

“It should be less than a minute, Captain.”

In fact, it only took a couple more seconds before virtual windows popped into existence beside Geary and others on the bridge, a sharp image visible in them. He gaped at what he saw, only gradually realizing that the entire bridge had gone silent.

“How big is that thing?” Desjani finally asked in a choked voice. “Lieutenant Yuon?”

“We . . . we can’t tell, Captain,” Yuon stuttered. “There’s nothing to scale it against.”

Geary forced himself to look closely at the image. If a very large spider had somehow mated with a wolf, the result might have been something like that. At least six appendages that might work equally well as arms or legs, a skin that appeared shiny and hard yet also sprouted patches of hair or fur, a head adorned with six eyes spread across the center, a flap above the eyes that might be for breathing, and beneath the eyes, a multijawed bear trap of a mouth. Two flaps on either side of the head made up of very thin skin rippled with veins might represent ears.

It was as if someone had searched for all of the most horrible-looking elements of living creatures and combined them into one.

“At least it doesn’t have tentacles,” Charban said.

Geary’s gaze slid away from the hideous appearance to focus on the clothing the creature wore. Brilliantly colored bands of cloth that shone like silk were woven about the body in an intricate pattern, the colors never clashing as they wound about each other. Odd, yet beautiful in its own way.

The creature was speaking, a high-pitched, wavering sound, as it spread out four limbs to their full extent on either side of its body. Impressive claws tipping the ends of the limbs also spread out, the creature holding the pose as it kept talking, the sounds occasionally interspersed with clacking as jaws struck together.

“Ancestors preserve us,” Desjani whispered, then swallowed and spoke in a nearly normal voice. “Is it threatening us?”

“I have no idea,” Geary said.

“Something that looks like that made ships and formations that look like that.”

“Yeah.” He looked down, breathing deeply to regain his composure. “Forward this to the civilian experts and see what they think it is doing.”