The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

“Not yet, Admiral,” Iger confessed. “There’s a lot of video being transmitted, but it’s in some very strange format that we haven’t been able to break so far. Not coded like the enigma stuff, just very different from how we do things. We’ll get it. All I can say with confidence is that, whatever they are, there are a lot of them in this star system.”

To one side of the intelligence officer’s image, another picture appeared, that of the primary inhabited world orbiting this star. The image zoomed in at Iger’s command, resolving into a curiously rectangular landscape. “Those are buildings, sir. All of it. They’ve got soil and plants on the roofs, but as far as we can tell, almost all of the land surface area on that planet is covered with buildings or roads. From a few construction or repair locations we can see, it appears that all of the buildings extend at least several stories underground and several stories aboveground as well.”

Geary tried to grasp that level of population density and failed. “Where do they get food?”

“The buildings, Admiral. Some of them, or some of the floors in them, are vertical farms. You can see the crops on almost all of the roofs.”

“How many of these creatures are there?”

Iger almost shrugged, then caught himself. Junior officers did not shrug at admirals. “The planet is a little smaller than Earth-standard, sir, and has less land area. But it depends a great deal upon how large they are. As individuals, I mean. If they are roughly comparable to humans . . .” Iger looked to one side of the screen as he ran some numbers. “Something on the order of twenty billion.”

“Twenty billion? On one planet of that size?”

“If they’re roughly the same size as we are,” Lieutenant Iger said.

“Let me know when you learn more,” Geary ordered, then sat back again, rubbing his forehead. “What am I forgetting?” he asked Desjani.

“The fortresses,” she answered.

“I haven’t forgotten the damned fortresses. They’re impressive as hell, but they’re still targets in fixed orbits. We’ll throw enough rocks at them to—” Geary stopped as Desjani shook her head. “What?”

“You’re right,” she said. “They are targets. So why were they built? Why are they still here? Why hasn’t someone else blown them away already? I loathe the enigmas, but I know they’re smart enough to throw rocks at minor planet-sized targets. Yet whatever lives here has gone to tremendous effort to build those fortresses. Have you noticed how few asteroids are in this star system? They must have used most of their asteroids to build those things, and, unless they’re simply crazy, they shouldn’t have done that if the fortresses were just targets.”

Geary stared at the star system display. “They’ve got a defense against rocks?”

“We would be wise to assume so, Admiral.”

“Let’s find out. What’s the biggest rock aboard Dauntless?”

Desjani grinned. “We’ve got a five-hundred-kilo kinetic round.”

“Can we launch it toward that closest fortress without endangering any of our other ships?”

She ran the trajectory, then nodded. “Permission to fire?”

“Launch it,” Geary ordered.

The kinetic round was simply a large slug of solid metal, heavy enough that even Dauntless jerked slightly when the object was launched at tremendous velocity on a trajectory aimed at the nearest alien fortress, the same fortress that had sent the attack force against Geary’s fleet. “Sixty-five minutes to impact,” Desjani reported, still smiling.

At least now she was in a good mood.

If he could have looked out a window in the side of Dauntless, if such a window had existed instead of sensors feeding into virtual windows and displays through the ship, and if Dauntless’s bridge had been near the outside of the hull instead of buried within it, the stars outside wouldn’t have shown any sign of moving. If Geary called up an image of Dauntless seen from one of the other ships of the fleet, the large human ship would have seemed very tiny as it hung apparently motionless in space. There would have been no indications that the battle cruiser was moving at a velocity of point zero five light speed, or about fifteen thousand kilometers per second. Unthinkably fast on the surface of a planet, that speed felt slow among the vast distances between planets. If humans had been forced to use such velocities to travel between stars, the voyages would have required years and decades.

And he wouldn’t have found himself stuck out here, much farther than any humans had ever gone before, dealing with another alien species that didn’t seem to be thrilled at the opportunity to meet humanity face-to-face.

At least the Alliance government couldn’t claim that he hadn’t followed orders. He had definitely found the limit of space in this direction controlled by the enigma race.

Geary sat watching the fleet re-form around Dauntless, the other ships using the flagship as their point of reference. He took comfort in the familiarity and the expertise the ship movements demonstrated.