The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

The bear-cow armada had kept on, but the energies erupting in its center had disrupted the other ships, breaking the charge. And Badaya had finally gotten the right maneuver in, twisting his formation up and climbing so that his ships were out of range of most of the surviving enemy warships as they blundered past.

Geary finally understood what had happened. Not a miracle, but something unexpected. “They blew a hole through the Kick formation. They made it through because everything in front of them got pulverized by that barrage instead of evading.” Why hadn’t they evaded? Just because bear-cow tactics didn’t allow for individual action? Had the bear-cow commander been surprised by the new tactic? Had that commander tried to order evasive action but been unable to do so in time, while the individual Kick ships held to their places in the formation?

“Three of the superbattleships are gone, along with a lot of the ships that were near them.” Desjani’s pride was now mixed with glee. “May the living stars remember what happened here!”

“They’re not beaten yet,” Geary warned, watching the bear-cows re-forming. After every loss, they had simply tightened their formation, and now they did it again, ending up with a much smaller formation but still clearly ready to fight.

He could hear cheers echoing through Dauntless as word spread of what the battleships had done. There would be cheers on every ship in the fleet right now. For the moment, morale wasn’t a problem.

“Why didn’t they dodge?” Desjani demanded, and Geary realized that she was referring not to the human battleships but to the bear-cow warships. “The Kicks must have known what that many kinetic projectiles of that mass could do . . .” She turned a look of dawning understanding on him. “They don’t. They don’t have kinetic projectiles aboard their own ships, they don’t use them because they have a defense against their being used against planets. Since ships can usually dodge rocks easily, there would have been no justification for their warships carrying rocks.”

“The oldest trap in the book,” Geary said. “Assuming that the enemy’s capabilities, tactics, and intentions match your own. Thank the living stars that gives us an edge.” They would need that edge, but he doubted that tactic would work a second time now that the bear-cows had seen it used.

The five battle cruisers merged with the rest of subformation Gamma One One again, Dauntless resuming her status as guide ship. The Kicks had swung wide to the left and up, trying to catch Badaya’s force, but they were still hampered by the sluggishness of the surviving superbattleships. Badaya was accelerating straight up, unable to pull clear of contact with ships limited in their propulsion capability, but prolonging the time needed for the bear-cows to catch him. Tulev’s force had come up slightly to aim for an intercept with the Kicks’ new course, while the spider-wolf ships swarmed everywhere, zipping through human formations with crazy nonchalance and ripping apart any bear-cow ships that had been knocked out of the armada by damage.

The eight battleships from Badaya’s formation were coming up and swinging back to try to catch up with their formation again, Dependable and Conqueror screening their more badly damaged sister ships, a welter of spider-wolf ships forming a weaving barrier between them and the bear-cow armada. Who ordered that charge? Geary wondered. Did Badaya tell them to make that move, or did Jane Geary start it on her own initiative? Whoever did it, it was the right decision. And who came up with the idea of using their kinetic projectiles against this enemy?

Putting aside questions he couldn’t address now, Geary brought his formation nearly straight on, aiming to catch the bear-cow force as it steadied out on the new intercept with Badaya. He should get there minutes after Tulev hit them.

“How have the spider-wolves kept the Kicks at bay?” Desjani wondered. “From their firepower and their tactics, they could never have stopped the Kicks from parading through this star system and using one of those jump points.”

“Good question. We’ll have to ask them once this is all over.” He could see the damage and casualty reports coming in from the eight battleships now, feeling a heaviness inside as the fleet systems automatically totaled up everything. The battleships had paid a heavy price for their success.

Here and there on his display, new damage warnings flickered to life as aging systems overstressed by the demands of combat failed on Alliance warships. But the burst of failures earlier had subsided. These failures weren’t good, but at least his entire fleet wasn’t falling apart as he watched.