The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

“Admiral Meloch. Angela has a steady hand and a steady head. Or General Ezeigwe. He’s aerospace defense forces, but don’t hold that against him.”

“I won’t.” Geary thought only for a moment, feeling the prod of having to get moving on the assessment that Lagemann had brought. “All right. Consider yourself assigned to command of the prize crew on the superbattleship. Coordinate with the Marine on-scene commander and the officer in charge of the engineers aboard it. I’ll notify General Carabali and Captain Smythe.”

Lagemann stood up, smiling with enthusiasm. “It’ll be nice to be really responsible for something again! Any idea when the next shuttle from here to the superbattleship will fly?”

“I’m sure we can arrange something fairly soon.”

“Is there an official designation for the superbattleship yet? Some name a little less cumbersome than ‘the Captured Kick Superbattleship’?”

“I hadn’t thought about that, either. I’ll get back to you.”

“Great. With all due respect, Admiral, I’ve learned that one of the officers aboard Dauntless is the daughter of a man I served with. Before I take the shuttle back to the CKSB, I’d like to see her and let her know—” Lagemann’s smile wavered, then vanished. “I’d like to let her know how her father died. It was something I wanted to do in person.”

After Lagemann left, Geary sat, trying to think what he could do. One thing overrode everything else. He couldn’t possibly get to Pele or Midway in time unless the spider-wolves agreed to let him pass through their territory, which hopefully extended a fair way back toward human space. Which meant he had to talk to those who had been trying to talk to the spider-wolves.

He called Rione, finding her in her cabin going over pictograms. “You’re supposed to be resting, Madam Emissary.”

“So are you. And since when did you expect me to follow your orders?” She still looked tired and obviously wasn’t in the mood for banter.

“I know you’ve been talking to the spider-wolves about getting us clearance to head back toward human-controlled space through spider-wolf territory,” Geary said without further preamble. “That has now become an urgent priority. We need to be able to get back to the vicinity of Pele or Midway as quickly as possible.”

Rione eyed him, then nodded. “The enigmas?”

“Very likely, yes.”

“I understand. I should have thought of that. General Charban and I will make that our highest priority now. Oh, you or someone else had asked how the spider-wolves manipulate small objects with those claws. It turns out they have small . . . wormlike tentacles inside each claw that they can extrude for fine-motor tasks.”

“Small wormlike tentacles? Inside each claw?”

His reaction must have been showing because Rione smiled crookedly. “I know. Could they possibly be any more physically repulsive to us? That’s something we have to overcome. Speaking of which, I recommend you call Dr. Setin and Dr. Shwartz. They have an intriguing theory about the spider-wolves that I think you want to hear.”

“All right. Thanks.” He punched in the call to Mistral, quickly getting a reply from a guilty-looking Dr. Setin.

“Admiral! Is there something?”

“Yes.” Geary studied the expert on nonhuman intelligent aliens, trying to figure out why he had the appearance of an undergraduate caught cheating on an exam. Cheating . . . “Are you working, Doctor?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Setin blurted out. “But it is so important, we didn’t think we could afford to pause. I knew that you would understand.”

Which is why you didn’t tell me? “Emissary Rione said that you and Dr. Shwartz have a theory about the spider-wolves?”

“Oh, yes. It’s not really at the stage where—”

Dr. Shwartz expanded the view of the comm screen on their end so that she was in it, too, looking haggard but gleeful. “I think we should tell the admiral. This is more of a gut instinct, a belief, than something scientifically provable at this point. We can puzzle over exact words and phrases the spider-wolves seem to be employing until new stars replace the old and not find any certainty. What I feel to be true of these beings, and Dr. Setin agrees this is a real possibility, is that they think in patterns.”

“Patterns?”