The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

Geary quieted the next burst of laughter. The relief that had given rise to the light mood could easily shift quickly to renewed realization that they faced a serious challenge here. “The important thing is, we have allies. Unfortunately, there’s no way to coordinate our attacks. We’ll have to operate independently, attacking the bear-cows while also avoiding interfering with the spider-wolves.”

“And keeping an eye on the spider-wolves?” Tulev asked. “We have only their word that they are enemies of the bear-cows.”

“We’ll keep a close eye on our new allies and best friends forever,” Desjani confirmed.

Geary hesitated as he saw how everyone accepted what Desjani said as a definitive answer, just as if he had given it. Were they accepting that she had already consulted with him on that subject, or did they assume that she could call the shots not only on the bridge of Dauntless but also in her professional relationship with him? “Yes,” he finally said, hoping that didn’t sound like a weak agreement. “We’ll take nothing for granted.”

He brought up the display showing this star system. Ahead loomed the spider-wolf formation, smoothly perfect ships in gorgeous intertwining loops, now only ten light-minutes away. “We’re still in the middle, but not for long.” Behind, the bear-cow armada had stabilized into an oblong that bore a disquieting resemblance to the head of a sledgehammer, especially since the face of the formation closest to the human fleet included the superbattleships. Since Geary had held the velocity of the human fleet to point one five light speed, the bear-cows had been steadily getting closer and now were less than two light-minutes behind the human fleet.

On the display, the human formation of interlinked triangles finally broke, individual ships streaming off on different vectors that gradually coalesced into three subformations of roughly equal size, each heading in a different direction. “We’ve been giving the bear-cows a single target to charge at. Now we’re going to make them choose, and whichever one they choose, the other two subformations will be able to hit them while the targeted subformation evades.”

“Or if those spider-wolves are indeed the enemies of the bear-cows,” Duellos said, eyeing the display, “then when we pull away in different directions, the bear-cows may simply keep charging straight ahead at the spider-wolves. I’m not certain I would be pleased about that if I were the spider-wolves.”

Geary paused again. He hadn’t considered that, thinking that the bear-cows would continue their single-minded pursuit of the humans. But with the spider-wolves right in front of them, the bear-cows might shift targets.

He looked down and over at Desjani, who had helped develop the plan and was unsuccessfully trying to look like she was surprised by Duellos’s suggestion. Tanya, you obviously figured out that might happen and didn’t tell me. We’re going to have words about that.

Badaya was frowning mightily as he thought. “If that happens, if the Kicks go straight for the spiders, it will be an excellent opportunity for us to observe whether or not these two sets of aliens are indeed enemies and how the spider creatures engage their foes in space combat. That’s a clever approach, Admiral.”

“Thank you,” Geary said, not looking at Desjani. “We’ll have to see what happens, but we’ll be able to react appropriately no matter what the bear-cows do and remain clear of the spider-wolf formation just in case they’re not as friendly as they say.”

Commander Neeson hunched forward. “My systems security officer briefed me on the spider-wolf program we received. Our software specialists are geeking out over it.”

“I understand it has capabilities beyond anything human software can do,” Geary said.

“Is the rest of the spider-wolf technology superior to ours? My engineers are also enraptured by what they’ve seen of the spider-wolf ships.”

Geary gave the only answer he could. “We’ll find out. Right now, with the spider-wolf flotilla not changing its vector, we can’t tell what their maneuvering capabilities are like. Their shield strength seems to match ours, but we don’t know if they’re at full strength or dialed back since their ships are not in action at this time.”

Captain Smythe spoke up. “My specialists analyzed what could be seen of the spider-wolf equipment in the videos they have sent us. About the only conclusion they were willing to reach was that the bridge appears to be truly three-dimensional in its layout.”

“Three-dimensional?” Tulev questioned.

“There doesn’t seem to be a deck,” Smythe explained, “a single surface that everything is arranged around. Instead, the arrangement of equipment seems to reflect no up-and-down bias. It’s just wherever it best fits.”

“They couldn’t have evolved in zero g,” someone protested.