The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

Geary watched red-line warnings pop up on his display as Desjani pushed her ship into stress danger zones. Somehow, the other four battle cruisers stayed with her as the tiny formation dove straight for the bear-cow formation.

They went through at blinding speed, main propulsion units still at maximum. One of the superbattleships and a score of lighter yet still powerful Kick warships fired everything they had at the plummeting battle cruisers, but Desjani had gotten the relative velocity up close to point two light speed, throwing off the aim of the enemy. The human warships replied with lightning-fast barrages that pummeled two of the Kick battleships.

Then they were past, Geary reassuming control of Dauntless and bringing the battle cruisers back around to try to rejoin the rest of his formation.

A screen of spider-wolf ships had appeared between Badaya’s force and the oncoming bear-cows, but they could only inflict minor damage before scattering in the face of the superbattleships.

Geary braced himself for serious losses, knowing that Badaya had been cursed with bad luck but had also fumbled this situation, reacting too slowly to the damage and not turning away far enough and fast enough. Nothing could stop the Kick armada now from inflicting major damage on Badaya’s ships, not when those superbattleships were so hard to hurt or turn aside.

Without warning, battleships Dreadnaught and Orion broke away from Badaya’s subformation, closely followed by Dependable and Conqueror. Relentless, Reprisal, Superb, and Splendid went after the other battleships in a rush, every battleship in Badaya’s subformation now coming steadily and ponderously around on vectors aimed straight at the oncoming enemy.

The words of Captain Mosko came back to him. It’s what battleships do.

“They’ll get torn to pieces,” Geary whispered. My grandniece. Going to her death under my command just as her brother did. May our ancestors forgive me.

Desjani wore a look of tragic pride. “Yes. But they might enable the rest of Badaya’s force to get clear of that charge.”

His eyes searched the display, looking for a miracle. Tulev’s subformation still too far off, the spider-wolves only nibbling at the edges of the bear-cow force, his own battle cruisers climbing and turning back to join the rest of his subformation, which was still coming around to meet him and continue on toward the rear of the Kick armada.

No miracles. Just men and women doing all they could, knowing it wouldn’t be enough.

“What are they—?” Desjani burst out.

Geary’s gaze went back to the eight battleships making a suicide charge. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing, hundreds of projectiles being launched from those battleships, curving on trajectories aimed at the oncoming bear-cow force less than a minute from contact. “Kinetic projectiles? In a ship-to-ship engagement? That’s—” He got it then. “Brilliant.”

Normally, ships could easily dodge dumb projectiles fired from a distance, but the battleships had pumped out every kinetic projectile they had, a field of death rushing toward the enemy armada. The battleships had even launched their big kinetic rounds, the ones called BFRs by the crews, which rarely got used because of the wide devastation they could cause when dropped on a planet, but they were now on trajectories going straight at the Kick superbattleships. Only a collection of that many human battleships could have pumped out a sufficient number of kinetic projectiles quickly enough to force evasive action by an armada the size of the bear-cow force.

If the Kicks didn’t evade, if they held course to catch Badaya’s formation, they would wade right through that barrage, and surely no one—

Geary watched with growing amazement as the final seconds to contact ticked down, the human battleships now also hurling out specter missiles as fast as they could launch them, the Kicks holding steady on their course and firing their own missiles. Just as in the bear-cow videos they had seen, no one would waver, no one would break the shield wall, no one would step away from their place in the line of battle.

As the two forces and the kinetic bombardment merged, space filled with chaos too intense for the fleet’s sensors to pick out what was happening. Geary could only stare at his display, appalled by the amount of destruction.

One human battleship burst out of the bedlam, broadcasting extensive damage but still moving. Dreadnaught. On her heels came Orion, lurching with grim determination in Dreadnaught’s wake. Dependable and Conqueror followed, both amazingly lightly harmed. Then Relentless, Reprisal, Superb, and Splendid in a rush, armor pitted, shields in shreds, many weapons out of commission, but still going.