The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

Dauntless shook with only one near miss, Geary’s eyes on his display as it updated the status of the bear-cow fleet. Six of the lesser bear-cow ships—four about heavy cruiser–sized, one light cruiser–sized, and one equivalent to a human battleship—had been hit hard. Two of the cruisers were gone, blown to pieces, the crippled battleship spun off, and the other stricken warships wobbled to try to keep up with their formation, shields, armor, and weapons badly battered.

Desjani’s shout and the blare of collision warning alarms sounded on top of one another. Startled, Geary saw twenty or thirty spider-wolf warships weave through his formation at tremendous velocity, some missing collisions with human ships by distances that would have scared the hell out of any human ship captain.

Once through the human ships, the spider-wolves pounced on the crippled bear-cow warships, making individual firing runs that rapidly reduced all of those damaged ships to wrecks.

“What. The. Hell?” Desjani glared at her display. “Those stupid spiders almost nailed us instead of the Kicks!”

“Captain?” Lieutenant Castries said in a voice that mingled awe and terror. “Our systems estimate the spider-wolf ships were on manual maneuvering controls. They weren’t being guided by automated systems when they went through us.”

“That’s impossible. Nobody could—” Desjani shook her head. “Nobody human. Admiral, those things are absolutely insane.”

“At least they’re on our side,” he said, trying to judge the right moment for his next maneuver. Tulev’s force had just gone through a lower edge of the bear-cow force, leaving five mangled Kick escorts in his wake though taking more damage to his own ships than Geary’s force had suffered because the closing velocity had fallen just within bear-cow targeting parameters. Geary saw another flock of spider-wolf ships weaving past any obstacles as they leaped to attack the victims of Tulev’s strike.

Badaya had turned down again at the last moment, his ships raking the bottom of the bear-cow formation and knocking out four escorts while inflicting significant damage on several others. But Illustrious and Incredible had suffered some hard blows as well from two of the superbattleships.

“Immediate execute all units in Gamma One One come up one nine zero degrees,” Geary ordered. “Increase velocity to point one light speed.” He would bring his subformation up and over, back down in more than a half circle to close on the rear of the bear-cows, who had now slowed to point zero nine light speed.

An alert pulsed red. “Titan has lost that propulsion unit again,” Geary said, adding some curses under his breath.

Badaya’s formation had suddenly become limited in its ability to accelerate, slow, and turn. The bear-cows must have spotted the change in Titan because they began coming around to intercept Badaya’s force. Incredible staggered into position near Titan as one of its own main propulsion units gave way after the damage it had suffered a short time earlier, and almost at the same moment Illustrious suffered shield failures along most of her hull.

Geary snapped out more orders, bringing his subformation in a tighter turn, the moan of the inertial nullifiers becoming audible along with the groaning of Dauntless’s hull under the strain. The other warships matched Dauntless, but the assault transports swung wider, unable to equal the maneuvers of the combatants.

If he kept this up, he would come into contact with the bear-cow warships with his formation disrupted and the assault transports dangerously exposed.

“Admiral?” Desjani asked.

“It can’t be done,” he muttered. “Not that way.” But he had to do something to relieve the pressure on Badaya, who was unsuccessfully trying to hold his formation together as it turned to evade the head-on rush of the bear-cow armada. Tulev’s subformation had been caught out of position when the Kicks turned toward Badaya, and now had to chase back into contact. Tulev couldn’t make it in time to disrupt the attack on Badaya’s subformation.

Geary had five battle cruisers in this subformation. Dauntless, Daring, Victorious, Intemperate, and Adroit. His hand hit the comm controls. “All units in Gamma One One, immediate execute come up two zero degrees. Shift formation guide to Warspite. Daring, Victorious, Intemperate, and Adroit, match your movements to Dauntless.”

He turned to Desjani. “Captain, take Dauntless through the middle of the enemy formation at the best velocity you can manage.”

She smiled in a baring of the teeth that would have surely unnerved any bear-cows who could have seen it. “Let’s go!” she told her crew, then brought Dauntless screaming around, accelerating through a turn even tighter than that before, the other four battle cruisers following.