The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

Tulev’s formation tore past one side of the enemy armada, hammering at the bear-cow warships there and knocking out two more. But the attack barely registered on the superbattleship there, and the armada continued its charge toward Badaya’s force, closing at an increasing rate as the enemy continued to accelerate, and Badaya was held to about point zero six light speed by the propulsion casualties on Titan and Incredible.

Geary aimed his formation for the bottom side of the bear-cow force, Dauntless shuddering once again with hits and near misses as the Kicks threw out a heavy barrage. He half heard the damage reports streaming in to Desjani, telling of shields penetrated, hits on the battle cruiser’s light armor, and a few penetrations but no systems losses. On his display, similar reports flowed in from the other ships in his formation. None had been hit hard, but many had taken damage.

One more bear-cow ship was limping, unable to stop a spiral out of its formation that left it prey to the spider-wolf swarm. Other enemy warships showed damage.

But it wasn’t enough to turn aside the enemy.

Badaya had two battle cruisers left in good fighting shape, and now Inspire and Formidable swung away from the rest of his formation, twisting around to come at the Kick armada.

Geary weighed everything: Tulev coming around in a wide arc that took up large amounts of distance and time, his own subformation doing another swing up and over that would take too long, Badaya altering course to head directly away from the oncoming enemy and gain as much time as possible before being overtaken, and the eight battleships on the other side of the enemy from Tulev and Geary trying to claw their way back to Badaya, the entire battle heading upward from the plane of the star system. He ran some hasty maneuvers through the combat systems, coming up with an answer that was desperate but doable. “Dependable, Conqueror, this is Admiral Geary. Proceed at best speed on an intercept with the enemy.”

Two light-minutes distant, the two battleships would turn and accelerate, leaving behind their much more heavily damaged comrades. That might distract the bear-cows, but Geary didn’t think so. The important thing now was to hit that armada with everything. “Captain Tulev, I am assuming maneuvering control of your subformation.”

No time to run this through the systems, no time to figure out the ever-shifting time delays and distances. He had to depend upon his own skills, his own experience, and the unmatched ability of the human brain to handle this kind of puzzle on the fly. “Captain Badaya, detach all of your escorts at time one seven, order them onto an intercept with the enemy formation at point one five light speed.”

Desjani had noticed the moves, frowning at her display. “What are you doing?”

“Bringing a hammer down. If I don’t, we lose all of the damaged ships and undamaged auxiliaries in Badaya’s formation.” Besides Incredible, Titan, and Illustrious, that included Kupua, Alchemist, Cyclops, two heavy cruisers, and several light cruisers and destroyers.

Inspire and Formidable, moving too fast for the bear-cows to target well, slashed at the enemy but didn’t knock out any warships.

“Captain Duellos,” Geary ordered, “coordinate the movements of Inspire and Formidable with Dependable and Conqueror. Make your next firing run in conjunction with them.”

Desjani’s eyes darted about her display. “You’ve got us all coming in together. We’ll hit that armada almost simultaneously. Will that be enough?”

“It had better be.” His gaze swept from place to place on his display. Badaya’s core of damaged ships still going almost straight up, Badaya’s cruisers and destroyers braking to fall behind their comrades and facing the oncoming enemy, the bear-cow armada curving in from the right and below to catch Badaya, Tulev swinging in a wide arc that ended where the Kicks would be, Geary’s own subformation coming over the top of its own curve and steadying out to aim slightly upward at the Kicks, the small force under Duellos on the other side, also climbing but from the left of the enemy. “All units, we need to break their charge. Press your attacks and employ kinetic projectiles against the enemy formation as you close to contact.”

“If anything will make them turn, that will,” Desjani said.

“If they don’t turn, and we hit them with that many rocks, they won’t make it to Badaya.” How badly did the enemy commander want the crippled human warships with Badaya? Did bear-cows suffer from the target fixation that could drive human combatants to fly right into obstacles ignored in their total focus on the objective?

“You know,” Desjani remarked calmly as the several groups of ships rushed toward contact, “the Kicks haven’t taken one important fact into account.”

“What’s that?” Geary asked, not taking his eyes from his display.