The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

Badaya bent an arch look at Geary. “The people of the Alliance would choose you if you asked for that openly.”

“I know.” Give him the full truth now. “That scares the hell out of me.”

“Understandably.” Badaya stood up, saluting. “Thank you, sir.”

His comm panel chimed the moment Badaya’s image vanished. “What did he want?” Desjani asked.

“He apologized,” Geary said.

“He apologized? Foot-in-mouth Badaya? Damn.” Desjani had never taken well Badaya’s often clumsy comments about her and Geary. “You are a miracle worker, aren’t you?”

“Very funny. Are you resting?”

“Resting? Me? Oh, yes, sir. I’m resting so hard that I’m sleeping in my sleep.”

“Tanya, set a good example for your crew.”

She offered him a rigidly proper salute. “Yes, Admiral. I hear and obey.”

With both Captain Badaya and Captain Desjani gone, Geary rubbed his eyes, thinking about trying to sleep . . .

Six bells chimed in spaced pairs across the ship’s general announcing system, followed by a voice saying “Admiral, Alliance fleet, arriving.”

An admiral. There were only two other sources of Alliance fleet admirals in this star system, among the liberated prisoners of war aboard Mistral and Typhoon. But none of them should be coming to Dauntless.

Geary was reaching toward his comm panel when it came to life, Desjani once again gazing out at him. “Admiral Lagemann has arrived on a shuttle and requests a meeting with you, Admiral.”

“Admiral Lagemann?” His sudden tension just as quickly gave way to relief. A personal visit was unusual, but not that strange with so many shuttles winging between ships. “Certainly. Send him to my stateroom.”

Admiral Lagemann took only five minutes to reach Geary’s stateroom, nodding in greeting as he entered. Geary was actually meeting him in person for the first time. “There was a shuttle run between Dauntless and Mistral, so I thought I’d take advantage of that to see you. I owe you a report, Admiral Geary.”

“About what?” he asked, unable to recall with his mind cluttered by everything he had to deal with in the aftermath of the battle and the capture of the bear-cow superbattleship. “It’s nice to meet you at last. Have a seat.”

“Thank you.” Lagemann sat down, looking around Geary’s stateroom with a small smile. “Nothing fancy, but it’s home, eh?”

“That’s a good way to describe it.” He didn’t have any other home. There was his home world, Glenlyon, where the cult of Black Jack had burned the brightest. The idea of going back there, to a world filled with familiar places but empty of all of the people he had once known who had died during the last century, to a world that would treat him as some superhuman hero, was more frightening than facing battle.

“It’s not too different from my last flagship.” A wry look crossed Admiral Lagemann’s face. “Also a battle cruiser. Invincible.”

“Invincible? I wonder how many Invincibles ago that was,” Geary said.

“Probably a dozen. I was in Syndic hands long enough, and everyone knows how long Invincibles last. I don’t know why I was foolish enough to put my flag on one of them. May I?” Lagemann reached for the display controls, bringing up the regions of space that the fleet had traversed. “You asked for an assessment of what we thought the enigmas might be up to.”

And had then forgotten about it. Thank goodness he had remembered to delegate that task. “What did you conclude?”

“A stab in the back.” Lagemann grinned lopsidedly. “Big surprise, huh?” He highlighted one star. “We jumped from here to the bear-cow star, Pandora. The enigmas were following us there with a fair-sized force, but they didn’t chase us to Pandora, doubtless knowing exactly what awaited us there. Now, since they knew what defenses the bear-cows had, the enigmas would have been justified in concluding that our chances of getting out of Pandora in one piece were pretty damned small.”

“It wasn’t a situation I’d want to be caught in again,” Geary agreed.

“So, if we fought our way back to this enigma star, going back the way we came, what remnants of our force reached them would be chewed up. A reasonable conclusion for the enigmas to make. They could leave a blocking force there to deal with whatever made it back to them. But that wouldn’t prevent another human fleet from showing up and driving through their space in the future.”

Lagemann shifted the star display back toward human space. “No. If they are going to ensure that no more humans come knocking, they need to lock the front door.”

“Pele?” Geary asked. “There’s nothing there.”

“No. But for us to get to Pele we had to go through—”

“Midway.” He stared at the star display, appalled. “The enigmas will try to eliminate our ability to use Midway as a stepping-stone into their territory.”